I downloaded it from the freaking Internet and now I will destroy the world…

Discussing the Wikileaks revelations in the context of internet security this morning perhaps shows the trajectory that other emerging technologies will follow.

The Internet is not an emerging technology anymore, although many of its applications still are, but one of its key effects has been the shift of power from government and large organisations to the individual. Leaking hundreds of thousand of documents fifteen years ago would have required shifting and copying the contents of hundreds of thousands of manila folders, whereas now it just takes a few mouse clicks.

Similarly, technology innovation used to be the preserve of large organisations such as Bell Labs, IBM and Sony. While the dot com boom rewrote some of the rules, most other technologies still required labs and fabs (and billions of dollars of capital investment) to get to market.

But in 2010 we are seeing the beginning of a new era where smaller organisations are empowered by information technology, and the vast resources needed to synthesize and produce new materials can be increasingly replaced by modelling – and this is increasingly applying as much to life sciences as it does to the physical sciences.

As a result, technologies that required hundreds of people to develop can be produced by tens of people, and that number is falling all the time.

In the same way that Wikileaks has shifted the power away from governments and towards individuals, many other emerging technologies will follow the same path, allowing not just their development, but their proliferation too. All of this can occur ‘under the radar’ of existing regulatory frameworks, meaning that technology has the future potential to be as free and unregulated as information is today.

Two and a half years ago I was invited to join the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on nanotechnologies, as part of “the worlds largest brainstorming”. The chief reason for having a nanotechnology council at all was that nanotech had been identified as a global risk in a WEF report (thank you Prince Charles), so we found ourselves among many luminaries for the worlds of business and governance, although shoved into a corner with little interaction with the rest of the meeting.

Part of the outcome of that first meeting was the realisation that from most points of view, such as innovation, regulation, funding or governance, most emerging technologies faced similar problems. As a result we changed the name of our council to Emerging Technologies and at the second meeting in 2009 actually attracted some brief attention as a result of some rather intense lobbying to promote the idea that Emerging Technologies can be part of the solution rather than simply a risk.

While we discussed Emerging Technologies in terms of nanotechnolgies, synthetic biology and geoenginering, we still lacked a real sense of how Emerging Technologies could be defined. To some the phrase meant Twitter, while to others it meant computational chemistry.

At this years meeting we finally assembled enough brain power to come up with a draft definition saying that  Emerging Technologies are ones that:

• arise from new knowledge, or the innovative application of existing knowledge;
• lead to the rapid development of new capabilities;
• are projected to have significant systemic and long-lasting economic, social and political impacts;
• create new opportunities for and challenges to addressing global issues; and
• have the potential to disrupt or create entire industries.

Although the definition is still a little wordy, it does capture the essence of the discussion.

For technologies to be ‘emerging’ there needs to be some kind of acceleration taking place, or some huge government funding effort, massive market pull, or some other factor that sets them apart from all of the other technologies that are chugging along quite nicely but not going anywhere fast. It’s not perfect, but it is a start.

To get to grips with nanotechnology, you need to start with this!

I always count myself lucky that I have never had a standard job. From my first job with VG Ionex testing and tweaking a wide variety of ion guns (but try getting one through an airport without saying ‘gun!’) to my current bipolar technology/fashion enterprises I’ve rarely done the same thing two days in a row. So far this week I’ve been sorting through fashion photographs as a result of a recent fashion shoot, had an email conversation with a scientist/entrepreneur so well known and respected that even I felt humbled, and spent a morning discussing issues facing aviation and mass tourism with a senior figure from a FTSE 100 quoted travel firm.

What has this got to do with nanotechnology and other emerging technologies? Quite a lot as it turns out.

A key part of what we have done at Cientifica over the past ten years has been to make accurate predictions bout the direction technology will take, and between myself and ‘The Nanoclast‘ we’ve done a pretty good job or predicting the future while avoiding the worst of the pitfalls.One of the reasons for this is that we haven’t limited ourselves to technology, but spend a huge amount of time getting to grips with the issues facing a wide range of industries, as well as global macroeconomic trends, all of which help us make better decisions on what technologies our clients should back, or steer well clear of.

A typical example of how technology predictions can be totally wrong is in the aerospace industry. For almost ten years a variety of pundits have been claiming that the use of nanotube based composites can make aircraft lighter and more fuel efficient, but it just hasn’t happened. The reason is (at least) twofold, driven by two different factors, the supply chain and regulation.

A problem faced by a a number of emerging technologies is the lack of supply chain maturity. For a material to be considered usable most industries a prerequisite would be to have three or four financially stable producers with decent quality control in place so that the same material is guaranteed every time, whether a few grammes or tonnes. A cluster of start ups and students working part time won’t impress Airbus Industrie or Boeing.

Qualification of materials to comply with regulation is something I spent years on at the European Space Agency. The problem is that you can’t just slap any old material into a satellite or airframe and hope it works – the consequences of failure are far too high to consider risking. So all new materials have to go through extensive testing before they can be flown, and this takes time and money. Boeings switch to composites for the 787 is already years behind schedule, and compared with the kind of materials becoming available now the 787 construction is not particularly advanced. The best data recorder for satellites was magnetic tape well into the 90′s for the same reason, a stray proton flipping a call in a solid state memory could wipe out an entire mission, but even tape jams could be fixed with a bit of jiggling about.

So, if you want to really understand nanotechnology, and do something useful with it, you have to spend as much time hanging around coffee houses and hotel bars as you do in the lab, and get through the Economist, Spectator and visit a gallery or museum every week just to put it all in context.

Variety may be the spice of life, but its just as important to nanotechnology.

Encoding short messages in the DNA of bacteria could help nanobots in the fight against cancer

I’ll leave the professional report readers such as 2020Science to wade through the Friends of the Earth’s latest broadside against nanotechnology which claims that it “isn’t green enough.”

This brief report in “The Australian” neatly sums up the argument, which is that although nanotechnology has been spoken of as a solution to some aspects of climate change, it is is less green than other alternative approaches such as sitting still and waiting for the world to end, and therefore it shouldn’t be funded.

Some of the arguments are clearly rather silly and selective. Claiming for example that “the energy conversion efficiency of nano solar panels was 10 per cent less than conventional silicon panels” is rather unfair given the stage of the development of the technology and ignores the amount of R&D going into areas such as organic photovoltaics. Similarly claims that “processing may also involve the use toxic chemicals and solvents, and the release greenhouse gases such as methane” could be applied to almost every area of human activity, or indeed inactivity.

Technology always needs to be seen over time, and the fact that Stephenson’s Rocket wasn’t as fast as a galloping horse in its first trial probably led to similar calls for the technology to be abandoned.

Perhaps the most depressing thing is that in order to make the argument that nanotech isn’t green enough, Friends of the Earth has to waste its (and our) time shooting down some of the wilder claims about nanotechnologies, while ignoring much of the rational scientific work that going on.

What I’d love to hear from an environmental group is a rational argument about nanotechnology. How do we encourage applications that could limit climate change and protect the environment while monitoring and averting any unintended risks and consequences? Carping from the sidelines may create a few sound bites, but it won’t change government policy and nor will it stymie human creativity when it comes to applying technology.

To have a real impact, environmental groups need to make themselves part of the debate rather than sitting in the corner sulking with their backs to the everyone.

One day nanomachines may be powered purely by information, the creation of Maxwell’s demon suggests

A fine ice layer can be used to perfectly position the components of carbon-nanotube transistors

The first part of any legal document is concerned with defining the terms used, what do terms such as ‘the company’ or  ’the client’ refer to for example. Most of these issues are fairly straightforward, but when you get to the level of international legislation defining terms becomes rather more complex, as the European Commission is just finding out.

After many years  of the slow but inexorable march towards the regulation of nanomaterials, the European Commission is now trying to understand what a nanomaterial actually is, and has launched a consultation process ”to collect stakeholders’ views on the envisaged definition.” According to the Commission

The definition of the term “nanomaterial” should be based on available scientific knowledge and should be used for regulatory purposes. The definition should determine when a material should be considered as a nanomaterial for legislative and policy purposes in the European Union.

The problem comes from the previous standard definition of a nanomaterial having particles in the size range 1-100nm. Anyone who has worked with nanomaterials will know that in many cases there is a wide range of particle sizes present, some of which may be above 100nm or even below 1nm and the situation becomes even more complex when you start working with compounds and agglomerations.  The EU seems to be moving towards a definition involving both size distribution and surface area:

The opinion “Scientific basis for the definition of the term ‘Nanomaterial’” was adopted for public consultation on 6 July 20106. SCENIHR concluded that size is universally applicable to nanomaterials and is a key element to a definition. A defined size range would facilitate a uniform interpretation. The lower limit was proposed at 1 nm. An upper limit of 100 nm is commonly used by general consensus but there is no scientific evidence to qualify the appropriateness of this value. The use of a single upper limit value might be too limiting for the classification of nanomaterials and a differentiated approach might be more appropriate. For regulatory purposes, the number size distribution should also be considered using the mean size and its standard deviation to refine the definition. In addition the SCENIHR identifies certain specific cases where the application of the definition can be facilitated by using the volume specific surface area as proxy for the internal or surface structure.

Defining a nanomaterial at this stage may seem rather silly to some, after all they have been around for 15 years in their man made form, but when you consider the implications of regulation, whether restricting the use of nanomaterials, or requiring labelling for cosmetics, the stakes are high and an accurate definition is needed to remove another layer of uncertainty surrounding their use.

After a few years of being on the ‘funder’ side of the desk, I’ve vaulted across to start a new technology venture, and to begin the least pleasant part of entrepreneurship – fund raising! (Feel free to contact me once you have read what follows).

There are plenty of people out there who will tell you how to make the perfect pitch, how to write the perfect business plan, or how to pull together the perfect deal, which validates the old adage, those who can’t do teach (with my apologies to any academics who usually manage to ‘do’ and ‘teach’ very well).

The process isn’t horrible because of the amount of time and effort you have to put into financial forecasts, marketing plans or even explaining the technology, that’s all part of the fun, but what I won’t put up with is time wasters.

Time wasters are all too prevalent in the investment community and fall into two broad categories, those who don’t actually have any money, and those who do but aren’t allowed to spend it. As if we didn’t have enough to put up with counterfeit goods and drugs, we now have counterfeit investors. Just like a counterfeit watch, some of them can be very convincing.

Let me explain.

Back in the days when investors were nuts for nanotech, I received numerous offers to join investment companies, none of whom actually had any money but who thought that adding me to the executive team or advisory board would help them get some. It’s a chicken and egg problem for most new funds – investors want to know what deals are on the table and what the team looks like before they will consider investing, and the deal targets want to know how much cash a fund has before they will do much talking.  It’s quite a conundrum, and a tough one to solve which is why you don’t see too many brand new venture capital funds popping up. Quite often this type of fund is happy to waste everybody’s time by negotiating terms that they don’t have the financial capability to follow up on. It’s unfortunately very common and incredibly frustrating for all involved.

Those who have the cash but can’t spend it are almost as bad. They often work for a large established fund and show lots of interest, demanding rewrites of business plans and getting picky about IP portfolios and financial forecasts. As an entrepreneur you are happy that a sovereign wealth fund with billions of dollars to invest is interested in you, but only after multiple meetings does your new best friend realise that your business is actually too early stage, or that they actually only invest in property.

Over the past few years, the credit crunch has thrown up a whole new class of investors whose motives defy description.  This breed, mainly high net worth individuals outside Europe and the US is quite happy to sign term sheets and contracts, and then simply disappear for a few months. When and if you finally track them down, it turns out that some other business or investment vehicle hasn’t been doing too well and they don’t actually want to go ahead. Thanks for letting us know.

So the strategy is always to pick your investors carefully. There are good funds and sane individuals out there, but if you meet your ‘investor’ at the local Travelodge, or he expects you to pay for lunch, be very very wary!

Metal nanoparticles shaped like sea urchins can cause leaves to emit red light