Chapter 6.3: Will Small Be Beautiful? Making Policies for Our Nanotech Future
This chapter is a reproduction of W. Patrick McCray. “Will Small Be Beautiful? Making Policies for Our Nanotech Future.” History and Technology 21, 2 (2005): 177–203.
“It was as if nanotechnology had gone through a phase transition; what had once been perceived as blue sky research … was now being seen as the key technology of the 21st century.”
On October 24, 2003, California politicians, academics, and civic leaders attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the California NanoSystems Institute in Santa Barbara. This $55 million high-tech building, with its ultra-filtered clean rooms and modular laboratories, represented only a fraction of the burgeoning national investment in nanotechnology. Since 2000, when President William J. Clinton announced a new national initiative to foster the tools of the “next industrial revolution,” dozens of universities and corporations have initiated programs where scientists and engineers research phenomena and technologies at the nanoscale…
