The Speculist

Mapping the Development Space

In his Tech Central column, Glenn Reynolds introduces four categories of nanotechnology developments:

1. Fake (where it's basically a marketing term, as with nanopants);
2. Simple: high-strength materials, sensors, coatings, etc -- things that are important, but not sexy;
3. Major: advanced devices short of true assemblers;
4. Spooky: assemblers and related technology (true Molecular Nanotechnology).

This as good a breakdown as I've seen. These kinds of categories can be very helpful in analyzing developments in the field. The placement of a particular development into one of these categories can be derived from the answers to two questions:

• What is the overall societal impact of this development?
• What significance does this development have in leading towards true Molecular Nanotechnology?

Take any particular development and rank it on a scale from 0 to 10 in terms of its impact in these two areas. The answers to the two questions provide a set of coordinates that you can use to plot a particular development in one of the quadrants shown below. The quadrants match closely to Glenn's categories, although I think we have to hedge "Spooky" just a bit. We haven't had any truly spooky developments yet. But anything that scores higher than five on both questions is at least getting close.

So let's look at a few items either that Glenn mentioned or that we've covered in the past few months here on this site.

Development	Analysis	Soc. Impact	Tech. Impact
Nano Pants	No real contribution to the field of nanotechnology. Only slight impact on society (about the same as most other "pants breakthroughs.")	1	0
World's Smallest Electric Rotor	An important step towards true molecular manufacturing technology, but in and of itself not likey to change life as we know it.	2	8
Shirts that Stop Bullets	In addition to the obvious crime-fighting applications, the availability of such fabrics will have a tremendous impact on the garment industry (especially where outdoor/sporting clothing is concerned) and will lead to significant changes in what we consider appropriate building materials for homes or modes of transportation. Still, it does little for the advance towrads molecular manufacturing.	7	2
World's Smallest Bucket	A key piece of infrastructure needed for molecular manufacturing. Again, not likely to change the world on its own.	1	7
Self-Assembling Nano-Transistor	Self-assembling components are crucial to the development of molecular manufacturing. The availability of such components promise to have a huge impact on every aspect of life.	9	9
Nanoparticle Diagnostic Tools ( also here )	The ability to use nanoparticles to fight diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's will have a substantial impact on society as whole. Developing such techniques will also play some part in helping to move the field along.	8	4

So if we chart these developments out, we get a development space that looks something like this:

A few caveats about this diagram of the nanotechnology development space:

These are probably not enough examples; we need a bigger chart covering dozens of developments in the field.

The axes may need work. The self-assembling transistor is given a high score for societal impact based on the potential impact of self-assembly, generally. Maybe this doesn't make much sense when the nano-bucket and nano-rotor were given relatively much smaller scores. I think the Y axis works, but the X axis may need some retooling.

The scoring is based on one man's opinion (doing the best he can!), but what we really need is a synthesis of views from a number of different industry analysts. As with the developments shown, the more and varied the participants, the more valuable the analysis.

Even so, with all these caveats is mind, there are a few things to be gleaned from this map of the development space:

There is activity throughout the entire space; something is happening in each of the four quadrants.

The developments listed form a circle around the edge of the space. This could indicate that much of the activity within each quadrant is occuring in isolation, with distinct groups persuing their goals for distinct reasons. As the field matures, I would expect to see the developments more evenly scattered, with most of the developments ocurring around the axes, not the edges.

Anyhow, this is a start. I'd appreciate some input on the category definitions and whether these items are ranked correctly.

Posted by Phil at December 18, 2003 11:56 AM | TrackBack