The two camps are actually closer than their spat makes them appear to be. Even a Drexler defender, veteran venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, muddies the distinction between a nano-now and a Foresight future when he cites "the digital control of matter" as the ultimate goal of 21st century science and industry, while at the same time investing in "early" nanotech companies.

His firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, has invested in start-ups such as Konarka Technologies, which is aiming to harness nanoparticles to make inexpensive solar power films that can be applied to surfaces in the same way that ink is printed onto newspapers.

Meanwhile, the public seems generally unaware that Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Samsung, General Electric and DuPont are aggressively developing, and in some cases already marketing, more immediate applications of nanoscale science. Some of those projects include faster, smaller computer memory; lower-powered, longer-lasting LED lighting; and display screens for laptops, phones and PDAs made out of plastic transistors.

But what's most ironic about Smalley's criticism of Drexler's specific molecular-assembler approach is that many researchers are pursuing alternate strategies, such as the "directed self-assembly" of materials, to coax molecules to snap together into highly specific patterns, that seem distinctly "futuristic." IBM recently announced a first in this area: a material composed of two different nanoparticles that assemble themselves into a highly ordered, three-dimensional matrix. It's not exactly Drexler's molecular manufacturing, since there are no nanobots, but it is related.

And start-ups are pursuing other ways to put atoms together with relative precision. Arryx Inc. in Chicago uses holographic lasers to steer molecular materials at the microscopic and nanoscopic levels. Nano Ink, also based in Chicago, is marketing a device that can deposit molecules of virtually any material onto a smooth surface in precise locations or patterns.

Real progress in the field is obvious to anyone paying attention. Howard Lovy, news editor at "Small Times Media," a 2-year-old magazine and Web site covering the commercialization of nanotechnology, doesn't think Smalley and Drexler are really arguing with each other, or about the particular merits of molecular manufacturing, at all. [This reporter is a freelance correspondent for Small Times.]

He believes the two are really wrestling to shape public perception of, and government policy toward, nanotech. "They're doing this in a public way, because they're aiming to set the tone for what nanotech will be," says Lovy. He sees them jockeying for position in a coming battle, a fight that, like the one that continues to smolder around genetically modified food, will probably center on the potential environmental consequences of nanoparticles and materials.

In April, Peterson told a congressional committee that Foresight-flavored "advanced nanotechnology" may take decades to emerge, but, if it proves feasible, would alter the fundamentals of economics based on a scarcity of raw materials and energy.

Serendipitously, an idea bubbled up from Washington in early July that what nanotech really needed, now that Congress looks likely to pass the $2.36 billion 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act to fund a broad range of government programs, was a "Grand Challenge" on par with President Kennedy's initiative to land a man on the Moon within a decade.

Could such a long-range, focused effort -- a "Nanhattan Project" -- align the near- and far-sighted wings of the Small World?

Richard Smalley may be tightly focused on building a nanotube business, but it turns out that he has also been a vocal advocate of directing public nanoscience funding toward a great planetary challenge. He has argued that developing cheap, abundant energy with nanotechnology is the logical goal for a Nanhattan Project.

Naturally, Foresight advocates would like to see nanoscale manufacturing become the focus of such a project. The president's science advisors will review existing grand challenge ideas developed by the NNI and suggest new ones in September.

As for the feud fueling the competing visions, Small Times' Lovy says to remember that "Drexler is a futurist. He's interested in people looking back 50 or 100 years from now and thinking, 'Boy, was he right.'" Smalley, from what Lovy knows of him, is "more of a businessman."

Still, Lovy thinks the give-and-take between the two is good. "The future is not going to entail being 'for' or 'against' nanotechnology. The truth is more nuanced than that."

In a 1990 afterword to "Engines of Creation," Drexler wrote that he wasn't trying to promote nanotechnology but rather to raise awareness of its potential and consequences, including possible abuses.

He also conceded in 1986 that molecular manufacturing was probably the end product of a long evolution. "Assemblers will take years to emerge, but their emergence seems almost inevitable: Though the path to assemblers has many steps, each step will bring the next in reach, and each will bring immediate rewards. The first steps have already been taken, under the names of 'genetic engineering' and 'biotechnology.' Other paths to assemblers seem possible."

Indeed, the acceleration of technology that another futurist, Ray Kurzweil, has extensively tracked, suggests that society has historically underestimated what may lie ahead. People once couldn't imagine crossing oceans, much less communicating instantaneously with virtually anyone on the planet.

As fanciful as Drexler's nanodreams may still seem, it is almost a sure bet that the future will arrive faster than expected, and in unexpected ways.

Applying proto-nanotechnology to current business bottlenecks, while keeping minds and pocketbooks open to the molecular miracles and dangers ahead, need not be mutually exclusive efforts.

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