Some thoughts:

Good idea for all to keep this in mind:

“Nanotechnology's bid for respectability is colored by the word's association with a cabal of futurists who foresee nano as a pathway to utopia.”

But what the skeptics have to admit it that, even if nanotech lives up to only a tiny piece of the hype, in just a few areas of application, it could still change the world, leading a new industrial revolution. (and the recent increases in nanotech funding are definitely encouraging)

It seems to me that the most obvious nanotech application is the post-silicon chipmaking.

Drexler is wildly optimistic, if not completely nuts, if he thinks nanorobots will be bringing grandpa back from the dead within 3 decades!

Quite a sobering and persuasive article by Whitesides on the serious constraints on the biological nanotech applications. As he points out, it’s pretty damn hard to ‘outdesign evolution’.