June 93 - THE VETERAN NEOPHYTE
THE VETERAN NEOPHYTE
TINY FUTURES
DAVE JOHNSON
I recently attended the First General Conference on Nanotechnology. The conference was
sponsored primarily by the Foresight Institute, an organization based in Palo Alto,
California, whose sole self-stated goal is to disseminate information about
nanotechnology, to inform the public about the topic, and to just sort of do whatever
seems necessary to get society ready, to prepare the ground, for the advent of this
world-transforming future technology. (Apple also helped sponsor the conference, a
fact I didn't even know until I arrived.) There had been previous "research" gatherings
dealing with nanotechnology, but those were primarily for scientists and other
gearhead types (most of whom, it should be noted, showed up for this one, too). This,
though, was the first such gathering intended for the general public, and the first
intended to foster open discussion on the topic by all kinds of people.