How to Profit from Nanotech and Stem Cell Breakthroughs Like A Venture Capitalist
Patrick Cox asked:
Nanotechnologies are not some future development. The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies estimates that nearly 1,000 products that rely on nanotech are on the market now.
Currently, most applications simply integrate superior nanotech materials into existing products. Carbon allotropes are used to produce gecko tape. Antibacterial nano-silver is used in clothing, food packaging, disinfectants and household appliances. Nano-sized cerium oxide is employed as a fuel catalyst. Increasingly sophisticated products are appearing at the rate of two-four per week.
This month, we’re going to invest in 33 nanotech companies. Almost all are pre-IPO privately held startups. And we’ll do it in one step while retaining complete liquidity.
In the process, I’ll describe how one company is altering the DNA of viruses to attack cancers. I’ll also talk about a company that gets oils from algae. Another company that we’ll be adding to our portfolio is the leading contender in the race to make your current computer as obsolete as an abacus.
It’s Time to Get into the VC Business
One of the greatest frustrations about this job is coming across fantastic startups that I can’t add to the portfolio. I’ve written at length about a few of these pre-IPO companies with enormous, nearly inevitable returns. There are many more, in fact, that I haven’t mentioned. As a result, I truly envy venture capitalists. For some time, I’ve been fantasizing about a breakthrough technology venture capital fund. This isn’t quite that, but it’s close.
The attractions of the VC (venture capital) business are obvious. One is simply the ability to go where equity investors cannot. It irks me that VCs get to buy into obviously transformational companies when we can’t. The other reason is the rate of return enjoyed by VCs is typically so much higher than the stock market’s. I really want you to get in on the high yields earned by angel and venture capitalists.
This is why I’m so pleased to have come across our newest addition to the Breakthrough Technology Alert portfolio. Buying stock in this company allows you to participate in some of the most exciting and promising nanotech startups in existence – on better than VC terms.
This company acts as a kind of VC mutual fund, investing only in privately held early-stage breakthrough technologies. Moreover, your participation in the VC market remains liquid because you can sell the fund at any time. That’s a privilege that normal venture capitalists don’t have.
Not only does the VC fund take positions in important startups, it is actively engaged, bringing its expertise to and working side by side with the management of its portfolio companies. With its broad knowledge of the nanotech industry, the fund can help portfolio companies with general strategic and operational problems, as well as business and intellectual property strategy. It helps with executive recruiting, fundraising and compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
Perhaps most importantly, it is in the position to build collaborations with strategic partners.
In the process of vetting this company, I spoke at length with the company’s CEO. I was pleased, by the way, to hear he had enjoyed reading some of my past issues of Breakthrough Technology Alert.
He took the time to explain the VC fund’s investment philosophy to my associate Ray Blanco and me. According to this CEO, the current team has grown from four to 11 members since 2002. Five have extensive VC experiences. Additionally, team members have expertise in solid-state physicists, biochemistry and other technologies that intersect and converge with nanotechnology.
This team constantly monitors the world of nanotech. Additionally, it maintains contact with nanotech scientists in academia, where much cutting-edge research is taking place. While academic research is typically too early a stage for investors, these relationships allow the fund to identify important spinoffs as they occur.
We know that the long-term promise of nanotech is world changing. The immediate challenge for nanotech investors is finding companies in the commercialization stage. As I’ve explained, we at Breakthrough Technology Alert don’t mind getting in a little early, because the eventual returns will be so high. Investors do, however, want to know that their portfolios will maintain and increase in value while waiting for those eventual huge returns. Everyone at this unique venture capital fund clearly understands this need for liquidity.
The Only Publicly Traded Liquid Nanotech VC Firm
To my knowledge, this investment is the only truly liquid nanotech venture capital company available to stock buyers. Diversification is at the heart of its investment philosophy. It generally doesn’t put more than 5% of its gross assets in any single holding.
It also maintains large cash reserves as a means of counterbalancing the inherent risk of investing in young nanotech businesses that are not yet profitable. As its CEO says, the fund offers a “diversified way to play the emergence of nanotechnology – when most of the companies are still private – in a public vehicle.”
Several of its holdings are, however, already earning significant revenues. Companies in the portfolio generated $242 million in revenue for 2008, a 22% increase over 2007. Other companies are on track to becoming revenue producers or to significantly increase revenues.
Since I recommended this unique venture capital fund to my readers last week, we’re already closing in on double-digit gains. But that’s not the first time we’ve stumbled across a transformational company that’s making good on promises to investors…
Something happened last month that I predicted long ago. Big Pharm initiated a collaboration with one of the stem cell companies I recommended to my Breakthrough Technology Alert readers. Specifically, Geron Corp. (NASDAQ: GERN) announced a partnership with GE Healthcare.
The deal is to develop and sell drug-discovery technologies derived from two stem cell lines approved by the Bush administration. The stock rose over 10%, adding about $70 million to Geron’s capitalization.
I don’t write this to crow about being right. I write this because it is critically important that you understand that this is just the tip of the iceberg. For anybody familiar with the way pharma interacts with disruptive startups, it was inevitable. New products from Big Pharma have slowed to a trickle in recent years. The old platforms have largely played out. Slowly, recognition is dawning on the world’s medical giants that it’s time to invest in the most disruptive technology the world has ever seen — stem cell technologies.
Let’s look at the implications.
Pharm is a lumbering behemoth. It may take years for the industry to change focus, but it spews cash wherever it turns. The Geron deal is only the first, so let’s consider what’s next.
Geron has had years to cultivate its Big Pharm contacts, but Geron’s founder, Dr. Michael West, was busy creating and acquiring his own stem cell lines. His inventory, as a result, dwarfs Geron’s.
He has, in fact, most of the stem cell lines approved by the Obama administration’s new funding guidelines. They comprise, remarkably, more than 50% of all known eSC lines. At last count, he had over 200 lines, and 88 had important genetic diseases.
These cell lines, incidentally, were acquired from genetic screeners who help parents who carry genetic diseases assure that they do not pass them onto their children. They include cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s, muscular dystrophy and breast cancer.
Ironically, these cell lines hold the promise of producing treatments for birth defects that currently motivate a significant percentage of abortions. This means, of course, that the utilization of these cells may produce cures that reduce abortion rates.
The story does not end there. West’s ACTCellerate platform is producing the tools for potentiating stem cells into different cell types. Currently, West knows how to turn stem cells, including induced pluripotent stem cells created from adult cells, into more than 140 cell types. Recently, for example, he announced the ability to program cells to repair cartilage and connective tissues.
Therefore, the real number of cell lines that he can produce is in excess of 200 eSC lines times 140 SC types, which is over 28,000 cell types. If only a fraction of these cell types have drug discovery potential, West will do very well, indeed.
And so will his investors… Stay tuned to the Penny Sleuth to get a lead on emergent technologies like these as they happen.
Yours for transformational profits,
Patrick Cox
Personal Nanofactory
Nanotechnologies are not some future development. The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies estimates that nearly 1,000 products that rely on nanotech are on the market now.
Currently, most applications simply integrate superior nanotech materials into existing products. Carbon allotropes are used to produce gecko tape. Antibacterial nano-silver is used in clothing, food packaging, disinfectants and household appliances. Nano-sized cerium oxide is employed as a fuel catalyst. Increasingly sophisticated products are appearing at the rate of two-four per week.
This month, we’re going to invest in 33 nanotech companies. Almost all are pre-IPO privately held startups. And we’ll do it in one step while retaining complete liquidity.
In the process, I’ll describe how one company is altering the DNA of viruses to attack cancers. I’ll also talk about a company that gets oils from algae. Another company that we’ll be adding to our portfolio is the leading contender in the race to make your current computer as obsolete as an abacus.
It’s Time to Get into the VC Business
One of the greatest frustrations about this job is coming across fantastic startups that I can’t add to the portfolio. I’ve written at length about a few of these pre-IPO companies with enormous, nearly inevitable returns. There are many more, in fact, that I haven’t mentioned. As a result, I truly envy venture capitalists. For some time, I’ve been fantasizing about a breakthrough technology venture capital fund. This isn’t quite that, but it’s close.
The attractions of the VC (venture capital) business are obvious. One is simply the ability to go where equity investors cannot. It irks me that VCs get to buy into obviously transformational companies when we can’t. The other reason is the rate of return enjoyed by VCs is typically so much higher than the stock market’s. I really want you to get in on the high yields earned by angel and venture capitalists.
This is why I’m so pleased to have come across our newest addition to the Breakthrough Technology Alert portfolio. Buying stock in this company allows you to participate in some of the most exciting and promising nanotech startups in existence – on better than VC terms.
This company acts as a kind of VC mutual fund, investing only in privately held early-stage breakthrough technologies. Moreover, your participation in the VC market remains liquid because you can sell the fund at any time. That’s a privilege that normal venture capitalists don’t have.
Not only does the VC fund take positions in important startups, it is actively engaged, bringing its expertise to and working side by side with the management of its portfolio companies. With its broad knowledge of the nanotech industry, the fund can help portfolio companies with general strategic and operational problems, as well as business and intellectual property strategy. It helps with executive recruiting, fundraising and compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
Perhaps most importantly, it is in the position to build collaborations with strategic partners.
In the process of vetting this company, I spoke at length with the company’s CEO. I was pleased, by the way, to hear he had enjoyed reading some of my past issues of Breakthrough Technology Alert.
He took the time to explain the VC fund’s investment philosophy to my associate Ray Blanco and me. According to this CEO, the current team has grown from four to 11 members since 2002. Five have extensive VC experiences. Additionally, team members have expertise in solid-state physicists, biochemistry and other technologies that intersect and converge with nanotechnology.
This team constantly monitors the world of nanotech. Additionally, it maintains contact with nanotech scientists in academia, where much cutting-edge research is taking place. While academic research is typically too early a stage for investors, these relationships allow the fund to identify important spinoffs as they occur.
We know that the long-term promise of nanotech is world changing. The immediate challenge for nanotech investors is finding companies in the commercialization stage. As I’ve explained, we at Breakthrough Technology Alert don’t mind getting in a little early, because the eventual returns will be so high. Investors do, however, want to know that their portfolios will maintain and increase in value while waiting for those eventual huge returns. Everyone at this unique venture capital fund clearly understands this need for liquidity.
The Only Publicly Traded Liquid Nanotech VC Firm
To my knowledge, this investment is the only truly liquid nanotech venture capital company available to stock buyers. Diversification is at the heart of its investment philosophy. It generally doesn’t put more than 5% of its gross assets in any single holding.
It also maintains large cash reserves as a means of counterbalancing the inherent risk of investing in young nanotech businesses that are not yet profitable. As its CEO says, the fund offers a “diversified way to play the emergence of nanotechnology – when most of the companies are still private – in a public vehicle.”
Several of its holdings are, however, already earning significant revenues. Companies in the portfolio generated $242 million in revenue for 2008, a 22% increase over 2007. Other companies are on track to becoming revenue producers or to significantly increase revenues.
Since I recommended this unique venture capital fund to my readers last week, we’re already closing in on double-digit gains. But that’s not the first time we’ve stumbled across a transformational company that’s making good on promises to investors…
Something happened last month that I predicted long ago. Big Pharm initiated a collaboration with one of the stem cell companies I recommended to my Breakthrough Technology Alert readers. Specifically, Geron Corp. (NASDAQ: GERN) announced a partnership with GE Healthcare.
The deal is to develop and sell drug-discovery technologies derived from two stem cell lines approved by the Bush administration. The stock rose over 10%, adding about $70 million to Geron’s capitalization.
I don’t write this to crow about being right. I write this because it is critically important that you understand that this is just the tip of the iceberg. For anybody familiar with the way pharma interacts with disruptive startups, it was inevitable. New products from Big Pharma have slowed to a trickle in recent years. The old platforms have largely played out. Slowly, recognition is dawning on the world’s medical giants that it’s time to invest in the most disruptive technology the world has ever seen — stem cell technologies.
Let’s look at the implications.
Pharm is a lumbering behemoth. It may take years for the industry to change focus, but it spews cash wherever it turns. The Geron deal is only the first, so let’s consider what’s next.
Geron has had years to cultivate its Big Pharm contacts, but Geron’s founder, Dr. Michael West, was busy creating and acquiring his own stem cell lines. His inventory, as a result, dwarfs Geron’s.
He has, in fact, most of the stem cell lines approved by the Obama administration’s new funding guidelines. They comprise, remarkably, more than 50% of all known eSC lines. At last count, he had over 200 lines, and 88 had important genetic diseases.
These cell lines, incidentally, were acquired from genetic screeners who help parents who carry genetic diseases assure that they do not pass them onto their children. They include cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s, muscular dystrophy and breast cancer.
Ironically, these cell lines hold the promise of producing treatments for birth defects that currently motivate a significant percentage of abortions. This means, of course, that the utilization of these cells may produce cures that reduce abortion rates.
The story does not end there. West’s ACTCellerate platform is producing the tools for potentiating stem cells into different cell types. Currently, West knows how to turn stem cells, including induced pluripotent stem cells created from adult cells, into more than 140 cell types. Recently, for example, he announced the ability to program cells to repair cartilage and connective tissues.
Therefore, the real number of cell lines that he can produce is in excess of 200 eSC lines times 140 SC types, which is over 28,000 cell types. If only a fraction of these cell types have drug discovery potential, West will do very well, indeed.
And so will his investors… Stay tuned to the Penny Sleuth to get a lead on emergent technologies like these as they happen.
Yours for transformational profits,
Patrick Cox
Personal Nanofactory
NanoTech and Cancer Cures at a Cross Roads
Lance Winslow asked:
As NanoTech and BioTech merge we will soon find the cures to many of mankind’s most pressing medical issues and perhaps cures for many types of cancers. Consider micro mechanical delivery systems to the concentrated areas where cancer cells are or even search and destroy systems, which will go through the body and weed out the cancer cells from the biosystem? How far are such technologies from reality?
Not too far and some are ready to be tested on real humans, as they have already proven themselves effective in lab situations. One concept is to use micro thin carbon nano-tubes to deliver the medicine to the exact area cancerous area without hurting nearby healthy cells and the concept actually works, now it is only a matter of time to test it on humans, but really is only one of many such new techniques and technologies being considered today.
Others are also in the pipeline and everyday some medical researcher or scientists thinks of another possible way to cure some type of cancer you see? Within the next two decades scientists and research and development labs may be well on their way to eliminating cancer deaths as one of the leading causes of deaths in the first world? Eventually thru economies of scale these new techniques can be made available to humans across the Globe, Imagine a World with no cancer?
Personal Nanofactory
As NanoTech and BioTech merge we will soon find the cures to many of mankind’s most pressing medical issues and perhaps cures for many types of cancers. Consider micro mechanical delivery systems to the concentrated areas where cancer cells are or even search and destroy systems, which will go through the body and weed out the cancer cells from the biosystem? How far are such technologies from reality?
Not too far and some are ready to be tested on real humans, as they have already proven themselves effective in lab situations. One concept is to use micro thin carbon nano-tubes to deliver the medicine to the exact area cancerous area without hurting nearby healthy cells and the concept actually works, now it is only a matter of time to test it on humans, but really is only one of many such new techniques and technologies being considered today.
Others are also in the pipeline and everyday some medical researcher or scientists thinks of another possible way to cure some type of cancer you see? Within the next two decades scientists and research and development labs may be well on their way to eliminating cancer deaths as one of the leading causes of deaths in the first world? Eventually thru economies of scale these new techniques can be made available to humans across the Globe, Imagine a World with no cancer?
Personal Nanofactory
What corporate world will transcend to and what marketers will do in the nanotech age of open source digital products and digitalized matter?
Olga Kostrova, asked:
I would lie if I said that I know enough about nanotechnology, but from little I know, dangerous questions arise in my dangerous mind.
How nanotechnology and artificial intelligence development will effect the world of advertising and the business world as such?
To connect with my stream of thoughts, I suggest you to take 6 mins of your time and watch an interview with Ray Kurzweil who tells about his vision of the Singuarlity — a point around 2045 when artificial intelligence will blossom to such degree that technology will infuse itself with biology. Either you are skeptic or supporter, it will not matter when this picture becomes a matter of fact. Ray‘s theories have many supporters, as well as critics, but the fact that numerous Kurzweil’s theories and predictions he made few decades ago, now are the reality that seems obvious to us.
See the video on the IdeaMama’s blog where the article was originally posted:
http://ideamamaadnetwork.com/blog/2009/08/16/corporate-world-marketers-future-nanotech-nanotechnology-digital-products-business-strategy-compute/
“We have shown the feasibility of manipulating matter at the molecular level, which is what biology does. One of the ways to create nanotechnology is to start with biological mechanisms and modify them to extend the biological paradigm – to go beyond proteins. That vision of molecular nanotechnology assembly – of using massively parallel, fully programmable processes to grow objects with remarkable properties – is about twenty years away”, says Ray Kurzweil in one of his interviews. “The key issue is that information technology and information processes progress at an exponential pace. Biological evolution itself was an information process – the backbone is the genetic code, which is a digital code.” If indeed we decode the “DNA” of matter, creating ”things” out of the air (almost literally – all you need is a digital code that a friend sends to you via email or post on his blog) will become as easy as printing the fax page sent to you in a digital format today. Matter fabrication where the output of computation finds itself in a digital world, so any of products below become not more than a digital code, various combinations of 1 and 0 can effect all world processes to such to such degree that we can not even imagine now.
“We have shown the feasibility of manipulating matter at the molecular level, which is what biology does. One of the ways to create nanotechnology is to start with biological mechanisms and modify them to extend the biological paradigm – to go beyond proteins. That vision of molecular nanotechnology assembly – of using massively parallel, fully programmable processes to grow objects with remarkable properties – is about twenty years away”, says Ray Kurzweil in one of his interviews. “The key issue is that information technology and information processes progress at an exponential pace. Biological evolution itself was an information process – the backbone is the genetic code, which is a digital code.” If indeed we decode the “DNA” of matter, creating ”things” out of the air (almost literally – all you need is a digital code that a friend sends to you via email or post on his blog) will become as easy as printing the fax page sent to you in a digital format today. Matter fabrication where the output of computation finds itself in a digital world, so any of products below become not more than a digital code, various combinations of 1 and 0 can effect all world processes to such to such degree that we can not even imagine now.
No more Amazon, no more eBay, no more needs for sweet savings? No more wholesalers and distributors since no more retain chains… as we know it?
Boy, what is your girl going to Tweet about if not about her new bra? Well, may be about the one she just have fabricated from an open source code?
Of course significant majority of the world population has no idea what might be coming, but the captains of multibillion dollars corporation who are responsible for the future of companies they are leading, have no right not to care. Corporate executive might ignore the development of nano science, but ignorance will not help to quickly turnaround the company that one day can became invalid in a blink of an eye, and “nobody seen it coming”.
If you are a young advertising professional, don’t you wonder what you might be advertising in the last decade before your retirement? May be all there will be is digital goods?
And if you are running a hype ad agency, don’t you think that all traditional media performance matrix might become irrelevant as expression “print media” becomes an archaism, so all your focus has to shift to mastering digital marketing techniques?
And if this truly digital world indeed will become the reality of the future, it opens unlimited opportunities to step beyond the commerce. We might become observers or participants of the new scene where innovation will jump out of each of 10 billions computers (of course at that point there will be no need in computers as we know them today).
The video (see on IdeaMama’s the blog) below supports the concept of the world as a “global invention lab” which breaks organizational boundaries and helps creative minds to invent solutions to both local and global problems.
Now imagine what shift would arise in a social media (if it doesn’t go down the drill till then). I cannot wait for the time when I can transform IdeaMamaClub.com (www.IdeaMamaClub.com) and furnish it by cloud hosted tools for innovation beyond imagination… (Hey, may be in my 60th I will look younger then now with new nano tools for immortal suffering :-)). I do believe matter “decoding” might happen within this lifetime… I guess that would take IdeaMama from Web 3.0 to Web 4.0, Web 5.0, or what have you.
Do I believe in the prevailing goodness of developments in nanotech and artificial intelligence? I never said so, but ethical / moral side of technology evolution is a separate conversation all together, and I will come back to it in one of my articles.
“There is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. … In this lies our only security and our only hope—we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not death.” Albert Einstein about atomic energy.
Here are excerpts from Nanoveau, a new column by John Robert Marlow, the author of the novel Nano: Digital Matter—Understanding Nanotechnology.
The coming Age of Nanotechnology might best be described as the Age of Digital Matter, for it will be a time in which it becomes possible to manipulate the physical world in much the same way that a computer now manipulates the digital ones and zeroes on its hard drive.
There are 116 known elements, or types of atoms. The world and everything in it is made up of atoms of one or some combination of those elements. The arrangement and combination of these atoms determines what a thing will be. Consider the element of carbon: arrange a gaggle of carbon atoms one way, and you have a worthless lump of graphite; arrange them a bit differently, and you have a diamond. Combined with oxygen atoms, they become a gas floating through the atmosphere. When arranged in yet another manner, and combined with several additional elements—those same atoms form a human being.
And just as the digital ones and zeroes of a computer’s binary code can be arranged to form mathematical formula, a symphony, an invitation to a hate rally or pornography—any object on earth can be torn apart into its basic atoms, which can then be used to build something else.
In the same way that the hate rally invitation can be deleted and overwritten with, say, Beethoven’s Ninth, it will be possible to disassemble a car, a building, or a person—and use their atoms to build something else. It will also be possible (and more common) to gather the necessary atoms from a junkyard, a dump, or the environment itself—and then use those atoms to make something useful.
Nanotech is, at its heart, a technology which will allow us to work directly with the basic building blocks of matter—to manipulate individual atoms at will. Because human hands are millions of times too large to do this, we must construct incredibly small machines, or nanodevices, to do the work for us. Such devices are now being developed.
Just a few of the many good things this technology will make possible: pollution reversal (because pollutants can be reduced to their component atoms and recycled); elimination of disease and genetic defects (because the body’s cells and DNA can be altered); eradication of poverty (because production costs of nearly all products—including food—will drop to near-zero); microscopic computers faster than today’s best supercomputers (because of radical miniaturization); inexpensive space travel (low production costs for lighter and stronger materials), and; the indefinite extension of human lifespan (because cells which grow old or damaged can be completely restored).
“… Production costs of nearly all products—including food—will drop to near-zero!” So, do you think this development would effect your business? You better believe it!
CONCLUSION:
Are we moving from programming bits to programming atoms and as a result of it – matter? None of us can know for sure. But those who invest millions or billions of dollars in creation of hard assets with intent to commercialize them in few decades just can not afford not to care. Entrepreneurs, managers, venture capitalists…. Can you?
I don’t suggest anybody to believe that this picture is our definite future, but I encourage us to assume that it is quite possible and ask “what if” when making plans – if the prediction to be true, the long-term strategic plans that we are making now can be used in a digitally designed restroom, pardon my French.
I encourage us, who invent the products, build companies, strategize and design processes simply expand our consciousness and ask right questions… and hold our horses when skeptical “no way” response arises in the mind. The reality of tomorrow might surprise all of us.
It all might be just a theory, but might be one that is included in a history book a few decades from now. One never knows… unless he does…
“[Nanotechnology is] a development which I think cannot be avoided.”
—Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate, Physics
…
Personal Nanofactory
I would lie if I said that I know enough about nanotechnology, but from little I know, dangerous questions arise in my dangerous mind.
How nanotechnology and artificial intelligence development will effect the world of advertising and the business world as such?
To connect with my stream of thoughts, I suggest you to take 6 mins of your time and watch an interview with Ray Kurzweil who tells about his vision of the Singuarlity — a point around 2045 when artificial intelligence will blossom to such degree that technology will infuse itself with biology. Either you are skeptic or supporter, it will not matter when this picture becomes a matter of fact. Ray‘s theories have many supporters, as well as critics, but the fact that numerous Kurzweil’s theories and predictions he made few decades ago, now are the reality that seems obvious to us.
See the video on the IdeaMama’s blog where the article was originally posted:
http://ideamamaadnetwork.com/blog/2009/08/16/corporate-world-marketers-future-nanotech-nanotechnology-digital-products-business-strategy-compute/
“We have shown the feasibility of manipulating matter at the molecular level, which is what biology does. One of the ways to create nanotechnology is to start with biological mechanisms and modify them to extend the biological paradigm – to go beyond proteins. That vision of molecular nanotechnology assembly – of using massively parallel, fully programmable processes to grow objects with remarkable properties – is about twenty years away”, says Ray Kurzweil in one of his interviews. “The key issue is that information technology and information processes progress at an exponential pace. Biological evolution itself was an information process – the backbone is the genetic code, which is a digital code.” If indeed we decode the “DNA” of matter, creating ”things” out of the air (almost literally – all you need is a digital code that a friend sends to you via email or post on his blog) will become as easy as printing the fax page sent to you in a digital format today. Matter fabrication where the output of computation finds itself in a digital world, so any of products below become not more than a digital code, various combinations of 1 and 0 can effect all world processes to such to such degree that we can not even imagine now.
“We have shown the feasibility of manipulating matter at the molecular level, which is what biology does. One of the ways to create nanotechnology is to start with biological mechanisms and modify them to extend the biological paradigm – to go beyond proteins. That vision of molecular nanotechnology assembly – of using massively parallel, fully programmable processes to grow objects with remarkable properties – is about twenty years away”, says Ray Kurzweil in one of his interviews. “The key issue is that information technology and information processes progress at an exponential pace. Biological evolution itself was an information process – the backbone is the genetic code, which is a digital code.” If indeed we decode the “DNA” of matter, creating ”things” out of the air (almost literally – all you need is a digital code that a friend sends to you via email or post on his blog) will become as easy as printing the fax page sent to you in a digital format today. Matter fabrication where the output of computation finds itself in a digital world, so any of products below become not more than a digital code, various combinations of 1 and 0 can effect all world processes to such to such degree that we can not even imagine now.
No more Amazon, no more eBay, no more needs for sweet savings? No more wholesalers and distributors since no more retain chains… as we know it?
Boy, what is your girl going to Tweet about if not about her new bra? Well, may be about the one she just have fabricated from an open source code?
Of course significant majority of the world population has no idea what might be coming, but the captains of multibillion dollars corporation who are responsible for the future of companies they are leading, have no right not to care. Corporate executive might ignore the development of nano science, but ignorance will not help to quickly turnaround the company that one day can became invalid in a blink of an eye, and “nobody seen it coming”.
If you are a young advertising professional, don’t you wonder what you might be advertising in the last decade before your retirement? May be all there will be is digital goods?
And if you are running a hype ad agency, don’t you think that all traditional media performance matrix might become irrelevant as expression “print media” becomes an archaism, so all your focus has to shift to mastering digital marketing techniques?
And if this truly digital world indeed will become the reality of the future, it opens unlimited opportunities to step beyond the commerce. We might become observers or participants of the new scene where innovation will jump out of each of 10 billions computers (of course at that point there will be no need in computers as we know them today).
The video (see on IdeaMama’s the blog) below supports the concept of the world as a “global invention lab” which breaks organizational boundaries and helps creative minds to invent solutions to both local and global problems.
Now imagine what shift would arise in a social media (if it doesn’t go down the drill till then). I cannot wait for the time when I can transform IdeaMamaClub.com (www.IdeaMamaClub.com) and furnish it by cloud hosted tools for innovation beyond imagination… (Hey, may be in my 60th I will look younger then now with new nano tools for immortal suffering :-)). I do believe matter “decoding” might happen within this lifetime… I guess that would take IdeaMama from Web 3.0 to Web 4.0, Web 5.0, or what have you.
Do I believe in the prevailing goodness of developments in nanotech and artificial intelligence? I never said so, but ethical / moral side of technology evolution is a separate conversation all together, and I will come back to it in one of my articles.
“There is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. … In this lies our only security and our only hope—we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not death.” Albert Einstein about atomic energy.
Here are excerpts from Nanoveau, a new column by John Robert Marlow, the author of the novel Nano: Digital Matter—Understanding Nanotechnology.
The coming Age of Nanotechnology might best be described as the Age of Digital Matter, for it will be a time in which it becomes possible to manipulate the physical world in much the same way that a computer now manipulates the digital ones and zeroes on its hard drive.
There are 116 known elements, or types of atoms. The world and everything in it is made up of atoms of one or some combination of those elements. The arrangement and combination of these atoms determines what a thing will be. Consider the element of carbon: arrange a gaggle of carbon atoms one way, and you have a worthless lump of graphite; arrange them a bit differently, and you have a diamond. Combined with oxygen atoms, they become a gas floating through the atmosphere. When arranged in yet another manner, and combined with several additional elements—those same atoms form a human being.
And just as the digital ones and zeroes of a computer’s binary code can be arranged to form mathematical formula, a symphony, an invitation to a hate rally or pornography—any object on earth can be torn apart into its basic atoms, which can then be used to build something else.
In the same way that the hate rally invitation can be deleted and overwritten with, say, Beethoven’s Ninth, it will be possible to disassemble a car, a building, or a person—and use their atoms to build something else. It will also be possible (and more common) to gather the necessary atoms from a junkyard, a dump, or the environment itself—and then use those atoms to make something useful.
Nanotech is, at its heart, a technology which will allow us to work directly with the basic building blocks of matter—to manipulate individual atoms at will. Because human hands are millions of times too large to do this, we must construct incredibly small machines, or nanodevices, to do the work for us. Such devices are now being developed.
Just a few of the many good things this technology will make possible: pollution reversal (because pollutants can be reduced to their component atoms and recycled); elimination of disease and genetic defects (because the body’s cells and DNA can be altered); eradication of poverty (because production costs of nearly all products—including food—will drop to near-zero); microscopic computers faster than today’s best supercomputers (because of radical miniaturization); inexpensive space travel (low production costs for lighter and stronger materials), and; the indefinite extension of human lifespan (because cells which grow old or damaged can be completely restored).
“… Production costs of nearly all products—including food—will drop to near-zero!” So, do you think this development would effect your business? You better believe it!
CONCLUSION:
Are we moving from programming bits to programming atoms and as a result of it – matter? None of us can know for sure. But those who invest millions or billions of dollars in creation of hard assets with intent to commercialize them in few decades just can not afford not to care. Entrepreneurs, managers, venture capitalists…. Can you?
I don’t suggest anybody to believe that this picture is our definite future, but I encourage us to assume that it is quite possible and ask “what if” when making plans – if the prediction to be true, the long-term strategic plans that we are making now can be used in a digitally designed restroom, pardon my French.
I encourage us, who invent the products, build companies, strategize and design processes simply expand our consciousness and ask right questions… and hold our horses when skeptical “no way” response arises in the mind. The reality of tomorrow might surprise all of us.
It all might be just a theory, but might be one that is included in a history book a few decades from now. One never knows… unless he does…
“[Nanotechnology is] a development which I think cannot be avoided.”
—Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate, Physics
…
Personal Nanofactory
Powered by Wordpress | Designed by Elegant Themes