Fewer Nanotech Blogs ? Disillusionment ?

IEEE Spectrum has an article”The shrinking nanotechnology blog universe”, which tries to connect some turnover in nanotechnology blogs with disillusionment with the pace of progress or work towards molecular manufacturing.

This is wrong on several levels.

The non-focus on molecular manufacturing has existed for over twelve years. So any disillusionment would have been several years ago. There has been more recent progress towards funding and work on the path to molecular manufacturing than in the past. The connection to where nanotechnology is headed assumes that molecular manufacturing is not happening.

* DNA nanotechnology is going 3D.
* There are adjustable DNA glueing of nanoparticles.
* Self assembly is becoming more elaborate and useful.
* Moriarty was funded to experimentally investigate the diamondoid molecular manufacturing simulations of Freitas and Merkle.
* Zyvex and its group were funded to make more elaborate atomic layer expitaxy.
* There is aerojet printing of carbon nanotubes.
* E-beams, EUV and massively parallel ion beams and other methods are getting to higher throughput 1-10 nanometer patterning.
* Single molecule quantum dots.
* molecular electronics is making interesting advances through several paths
* More and more interesting activity is happening with molecular manufacturing and advanced nanotechnology.
* Advanced accelerating technology is happening in spite of government waste mis-spending.

The turnover of blogs is a natural aspect of blogs. Within blogs on a particular subject there is turnover.

– NY Times and mainstream newspapers and media are adjusting staff and sections because of overall pressure on the newspapers
– Some bloggers have employment or personal time and health issues.
– if blogs are written by one person then any number of factors could cause that person to blog less or stop blogging

I will also note that IEEE Spectrum no longer has Dexter Johnson’s nanotechnology tech talk blog in its own sub-category. It is now mixed in under semiconductor/devices. So it is now part of part of a sub-category and there are now more categories and sub-categories. Dexter’s posting frequency on nanotechnology seems to average less than once per month.