I found a new magazine, nano: The Magazine for Small Science,  this morning (thanks to Andy Miah). There’s an eclectic range of material some of which you can access  for free here.  I’m particularly interested in the ‘Nano’ versus nano article by Andrew Carruthers as it’s all about marketing and branding and how nanotechnology branding should not be left to marketing communications departments in various businesses. He uses Apple’s iPod Nano and Tata’s Nano Car as two examples of businesses that used the word nano to brand their products. I understand that neither product is considered truly nano-based which makes the examples rather telling since they are branding exercises that could be described as purely ‘fantasy’.

Carruthers does mention ‘Silver Nano’ products (which are nano-based) marketed by Samsung but there is no comparison of the marketing strategies or even a discussion of the difference between ‘fantasy’ and genuine nano products. That said, I have no idea what his constraints were with regard to word count.

Carruthers states the main issue this way,

Like so many areas of research, nanotechnology can be discussed quite easily with people who understand it, but can effortlessly mutate into a perfect nightmare when explaining it to people who do not. At some time or another, many of us will have been placed in a position where it was necessary to explain our professions and areas of research to people who may not understand them. On many occasions, such people seem keen yet are completely dumbfounded by colourful explanations. There is a sense of dismay [emphasis mine] as they and others ‘misinterpret’ descriptions, ask seemingly unrelated questions, and generally find endeavours at explanation incomprehensible and bewildering. In the main, people are quite genuinely either oblivious to nanotechnology, or have a decidedly skewed notion of ‘what it does’. This chasm within public understanding can be quite easily filled by other means, and the real difficulty is when that chasm becomes filled by marketing communications, rather than fact.

I don’t agree with him about having a “… sense of dismay …”  when people misunderstand or misinterpret information as I think those interactions provide useful data for the person who’s doing the explaining. Sometimes a ‘wrong’ question points you in a completely direction because it wasn’t the question that was wrong, it was you.

In my opinion,  marketing communication and pop culture are for most people the top purveyors of science information, like it or not. The challenge is finding a way to get your own messages out there and heard by using some of the same strategies or even incorporating some of the ‘noxious’ marketing communication messages. I’m not sure whether Carruthers would agree with me or not but, given the tone of his article, I think not. You can read the article for yourself here.

Quantum Tamers; Revealing our weird and wired future is a documentary being presented October 17, 2009 at the Quantum to Cosmos (Q2C) festival in Waterloo, Canada. From the Azonano news item,

The documentary brings together a stellar line-up of quantum experts to explore promising future technologies involving super quantum computers, ultra secure quantum codes to safeguard our communications, and even teleportation.

Although quantum principles are not fully understood, quantum technologies are already responsible for many advances in technology we already use including lasers and their many applications, magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs), modern micro circuitry, plus CDs and DVDs.

For more about the festival including details about when and where the documentary will be shown, go here.

Since the January 2009 announcement, by Paul Otellini, Intel CEO, that Intel would be investing $7B US to retool three  plants for the manufacture if 32 nanometre chips, I’ve been interested in Intel’s progress. This morning I found an article by Ellen McGirt on Fast Company which details Intel’s latest reinvention. I was intrigued to note that the $7B US investment was mentioned without a single hint that it’s a nanotechnology initiative.  From page 5 of the article,

When he [Otellini] made the unusual decision to travel to Washington, D.C., early this year to announce his $7 billion bet on U.S. manufacturing, “no one knew where the bottom was [in the economy], and there was a lot of uncertainty,” he recalls. The business case for U.S.-based facilities may not have been clear to others, but to Otellini, it’s right out of the Intel playbook: If the company controls manufacturing, it can control quality. “Now, we’re going to be a generation ahead.” He had another motive, too: “I wanted to get the attention of the government and to send a message to other companies that Intel was investing in the United States at a time of great uncertainty, and that we should reinvest together in the infrastructure of the country.” If this was a considered effort to improve Intel’s standing for future infrastructure projects, it’s not one other companies have picked up on. The response from other business leaders, he says, has been mute. “On the other hand, the President called and said that it was the only piece of good economic news since he’d been inaugurated,” Otellini says.

It’s an interesting article not least for how the writer portrays the various personalities.

I had a little wake-up call this morning on reading one of Andrew Maynard’s recent posts (here) where he is excoriating the publicity practices of some peer-reviewed journals. He mentions two articles that I have posted about here (the China deaths and the Canadian nano safety article from yesterday, October 15, 2009) and notes that the articles are being held back from public scrutiny for rather long periods while they are being made available to journalists and science writers with the effect that they are not receiving the scrutiny that they should. I had vaguely noticed that the first article was not available when I went looking and that the access information for the article I mentioned yesterday was vague but I didn’t make much of it. So, thanks Andrew for making me stop and think about it.