Nanomatic for the people

Lisa Napoli, senior reporter for public radio's "Marketplace" did an admirable job of injecting a wide range of ideas about nanotechnology in such a short amount of time in Tuesday's report. (Here's a RealOne Player link.) I told her so, and she responded, "That one was a bear!"

During our 30-plus-minute interview last Friday, Napoli was almost apologetic about how radio is such a superficial medium and she's sorry that her report could not go more in-depth. Personally, though, I think it takes a lot more skill to condense complex ideas into a three-minute radio story than it does to write a 3,000-word essay on the same topic — if the story is aimed at a wide audience.

Those of us who are deeply and daily buried in the minutia of nanobusiness, nanoscience and nanopolitics might pooh-pooh those kinds of radio reports, yet I'll bet more average citizens (and eventual consumers of nanotech products) learned more about nanotechnology through those sound bites than they could have in any of the thousands of white papers and reports floating about.

One particular part of the report that I'm proud of is Napoli's focus on Bruce Baughman (aka, "Mr. Bionic Crotch") and his nanotech-enhanced mesh device for hernia surgery. Small Times reporter Jeff Karoub, the man who also found a Sept. 11, 2001 World Trade Center techno-hero in the C-Leg, again did something that is lacking in lab- and business-heavy nanotech reporting — he found a real person whose life is measurably better because of nanotech's ability to improve on a medical device. My wife mentioned that Jeff's story was one of the few she's read in Small Times that seemed to resonate into everyday reality. And "Marketplace's" Napoli correctly picked up on that connection and ran with it.

If you sneezed, you would have missed my sound bites, but basically I provided the "industry expert" analysis. We talked about quite a bit more, so here's a brief rundown of other points I had made that were left on the cutting-room floor.

She had asked me why so much venture capital money was going into nanotechnology these days. Small Times' reporter David Forman, who follows the VC trail, had briefed me on some points the day before, so I came prepared. I said that one thing to remember is that, for the past couple of years, venture capitalists have been hanging on to their money. They haven't been investing it into anything, across the board. So, now that VCs have sufficiently recovered from the '90s hangover, they have more money to spend.

Article Author: Howard Lovy

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