I was really struck by a headline that has been circulating around nanotech websites since yesterday: “Nanotechnology Needs Big Facilities".
I was taken aback by the notion that what nanotechnology’s development has lacked over the last 10 years of large government investment is the building of large new facilities. From my perspective, it has been almost exclusively the construction industries around the world that have gained the most from all this government largesse. A nice twist of irony to go along with my incredulity is that these sentiments were delivered in Barcelona, Spain at the first International Congress on Nanotechnology and Research Infrastructures.Spain as the setting for this proclamation strikes me as ironic since Spain is in the midst of a economic crisis that has been in part created by construction companies building housing that no one could buy or occupy: speculative construction without an underlying economy to support the result. This strikes me as not being too different than International Iberian Nanotech Laboratory located in Braga, Portugal that is a joint facility shared by Spain and Portugal.
But this idea of sharing, which is so critical to the advancement of science, is almost anathema to nationalistic aims that fuels so much government nanotech funding. So all of these huge government investments that are supposed to put one country or region ahead of all the others is almost diametrically opposed to the sharing of these facilities. The rub will be that the nanotechnology advancements that these various governments are seeking will not come about through this race to put your region ahead of all the others but sharing your facilities with all the others.
Dexter Johnson is a contributing editor at IEEE Spectrum, with a focus on nanotechnology.