The World’s Smallest Snowman — So What? Monday, Dec 7 2009
nanotechnology 4:08 pm
Various futurist and transhumanists are abuzz about the world’s smallest snowman. Just like IBM’s recent deliberately misleading “cat brain” announcement, I consider this non-news. As far as I can tell, this doesn’t represent any sort of interesting technological advance. Microscale tin beads are not new. Focused ion beams are not new. Ion beam deposited metals are not new. This is just a gimmick.
I am not a nanoscientist. I am just a guy who reads news feeds like Nanowerk/CRN/Foresight and skims papers once in a while. But the way that the transhumanist and futurist community is reacting to this at all makes me roll my eyes. The majority of futurists lack scientific knowledge of any depth because they are too busy flying around, attending meetings, giving interviews, and running scenario sessions. Paying someone to sit around and read papers is not a common practice outside of academia.
Some portions of the press release are especially banal:
The snowman is mounted on a silicon cantilever from an atomic force microscope whose sharp tip ‘feels’ surfaces creating topographic surveys at almost atomic scales.
An atomic force microscopic that ‘feels’ surfaces at “almost atomic scales”..? Wow! This would be interesting if AFMs hadn’t been around since, oh, 1986. However, public knowledge of nanotechnology is so laughably abysmal that this can be passed off as news. I would understand the Dawkins/Digg/Reddit crowd saying “wow” to this, but I would hope that transhumanists, who presumably have spent some time investigating nanotechnology, would understand that this is just a publicity demonstration with no scientific value. Do they?
I posted about the world’s tiniest snowman on my blog for what it was – a fun story and cool photograph that comes just in time for winter, making it timely.
I certainly didn’t present it as any sort of major scientific advancement, and most of the stories I’ve read about it have taken the same direction I did. Rather it’s just something neat that demonstrates how easy it is to work with materials on a very tiny scale.
The majority of futurists lack scientific knowledge of any depth because they are too busy flying around, attending meetings, giving interviews, and running scenario sessions. Paying someone to sit around and read papers is not a common practice outside of academia.
Nailed it.