Iran has always been a source of fascination, a place of ancient culture and history and now a country making a lot of noise about science and technology, so I was pleased to be invited by the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council to attend the Iran Nano 2011 exhibition in Tehran.

As I’d spent the previous few days in Taiwan at the Taiwan Nano 2011 exhibition, it was a good opportunity to contrast the two events and try to judge whether there was any truth to the claims that Iran is becoming a world-class player in nanotechnology.

The unique aspect of Iranian nanotechnology is that because of the various international sanctions over the past thirty years it’s not the kind of place where you can just order an AFM or an electron microscope from a major US or Japanese supplier. As a result there was lots of home made kit on display, from sputtering systems, through surface analysis to atomic force microscopes. Looking at the results, the home grown kit was certainly more than adequate, with the main difference being the red LED displays and 20 turn potentiometers, things that have been long since replaced by digital control in the rest of the world. Does that stop an AFM from producing decent results though? Probably not. There was also a lot of discussion about selling this very low cost instrumentation outside Iran, although I suspect that IP issues may then become a concern.

So, Iranian scientists have engineered their way around the embargo on selling high tech equipment of Iran – and there was no shortage of high-end laptops on display either – but so often science is not about how much stuff you have in your lab, but what you can do with it.

The human resource development programs in Iran were also impressive. Iran has no shortage of universities, and it is also a big country with a significant population. There was mention of the country producing over 800 nanotechnology PhDs a year which is a huge number when compared with the rest of the region. A major part of one of the ceremonies I attended was the award of cash prizes to research students and small businesses, and that is always a great motivator.

There is plenty going on, much more than one would expect, so how has Iran managed to achieve this? It’s a combination of political support (and well done to the various scientists who managed to achieve this) and coordination. INIC runs the whole show, something describes as “Supreme supervision in realization of goals and programs.” This ranges from involving school children in nanotechnology to commercialisation and international development of technologies, and having a single coordinated and focussed vision rather than a set of squabbling and overlapping agencies seems to be something we all can learn from.

One of the other impressive parts of the program is the creation of the Tech-Market Services Institute, which specifically focuses on commercialisation of nanotechnologies and shows what good coordination can achieve.  Not so much an incubator as a collection of third party experts whose services are subsidised by INIC, the goal is to make the transition from basic research to commercial products as smooth and painless as possible, leaving academics to worry about the technology rather than legal or financial issues. This provides a pathway from assessing the level of technology readiness through assistance with patenting, documentation, market surveys, business plan writing, standards & certification, financial aid and venture capital and finally international marketing. Nice touches such as paying 80% of patenting costs seem to really encourage commercial development, with the remaining 20% paid for through the program if the patent application proves successful.

So what of the claims that Iran is becoming a world player in nanotechnology, ranking fourth in the world in terms of publications? Certainly the amount of papers published in international journals is rapidly increasing, and using this as raw data to justify being a world power is no more than many academics departments do. Discussing this with senior editors at some of the higher impact journals indicates that although the volume is high the quality is not, but it is improving. One would not expect Iran to be at the level of Germany, but it is among the best of the developing economies.

In terms of commercial products there were many on display. Agriculture was well represented, with fertilisers, pesticides, coatings to reduce fruit spoilage and even catalytic systems to remove ethylene from fruit storage facilities. Construction materials were another large area, with a wide range of building materials on display. Absent were areas such as semiconductors and medical devices, but once again their absence illustrates that INIC is focussing much more on the solutions demanded by Iranian industry rather than trying to compete with more advanced economies. There is also substantial work going n the the field of renewable energy with some large investments taking place.

Simon Brown, who also attended the exhibition, was similarly impressed, and raises questions about the proliferation of nanomaterials and whether adequate safety testing is being performed before they are deployed.

So Iranian nanotechnology seems to be in rude health. It has plenty of funding, political support at high level and most importantly, plenty of smart people involved. It is also developing stronger international links, hosting the meeting of the Asia Nano Forum and attracting exhibitors from companies and organisations based in Europe and Asia. I don’t think that Iran will be challenging the US and Germany as the best places to commercialise nanotechnologies anytime soon, but I suspect that the aim is more to support domestic industry and in that respect things seem to be working out rather well.

Good question!

Technology Review, besides being a great magazine edited by Jason Pontin, who I have known since the heyday of Red Herring, also puts on some great conferences. So I was excited and honoured to be invited to EmTech Spain, a two day conference in Malaga focussing on emerging technologies.

Along with my World Economic Forum colleague Javier García Martínez of Rive Technology and the University of Alicante,  we were discussing what nanotechnology is, how to build a business out of it, and where it will take us.

Normally at these kind of conferences, discussing everything from the future of cities to social media, nanotech is one of the most futuristic and least understood technologies on the agenda – making me feel like a cuckoo in the nest when most peoples idea of emerging technology is something that they can have on their iPhone next week. However the “imagine a world where…” speech was given by Richard Kivel this time, discussing regenerative medicine, while Javier and I discussed existing and future applications of nanotechnologies.

So what use is nanotechnology? Simple, I think is makes a key contribution to addressing issues such as energy and health, allowing us to support today’s 7 billion and tomorrow’s 10 billion people in an increasingly sustainable manner. You can read my thoughts in the original Spanish, or as a rougher and less polished Q&A in English below.

I’ll be giving a more detailed report later in the week – although the bottom line is that the efforts made in Iran are impressive – but in the meantime here’s a summary and a look around the exhibition from Iranian TV (in English). Nanotech is the second item, about a quarter of the way in.

While working on our report on Using Emerging Technologies to Address Global Risks, one of my favourite SciFi authors, Neal Stephenson, popped up with an essay on Innovation Starvation.

It echoes Tyler Cowen‘s arguments that all the easy big stuff has been done,  and that all we have left to look forward to are incremental improvements rather than world changing technologies.

Stephenson, being a science fiction writer, looks at space as an example where a culture of risk avoidance, cost cutting and politics combine to stifle innovation. As he points out, even China’s space program is merely copying what the USA and Soviet Union were doing 50 years ago rather than doing anything innovative.

It is undoubtedly a problem that plagues the world.  Whether it is large ambitious space programs, or providing a government stimulus for technology companies, the emphasis is always on avoiding failure, which involves avoiding anything innovative.  The million lost by a failed company always generates more headlines for governments than the hundred million successfully leveraged as we can see with the furore over Solyndra – although governments have a poor track record of picking winners.

So how can we kick start global innovation? As I argue in Using Emerging Technologies to Address Global Risks we need to focus on the big issues that we can all agree on. Water might be a good start.

Over the past five years I have come across numerous innovative approaches to water scarcity, from desalination plants that double as greenhouses to nanostructured membranes that dramatically cut the energy needed for desalination, but I cant remember a single one of them attracting significant investment. That wasn’t because the technology is poor, it is simply because of the costs involved in getting it to market put it outside the risk which any early stage investor would be comfortable with. Raising $50 million for social networking is relatively simple, but for water remediation it is a stretch too far. Development times in excess of 3 years and uncertainty about who will pay for the technology combine to make it almost unfundable.

For a small fraction of the current cost of dealing with drought – something that will only increase in the future – we could develop a suite of technologies to mitigate the shortage of potable water. But we won’t.

I’m not convinced by the innovation starvation argument, I think we have plenty of innovation but we lack the political will to deploy them.  The challenge isn’t so much stimulating innovation as effectively making the case for governments and international institutions to use it.

(Foreword to Using Emerging Technologies to Address Global Risks , October 2011)

This is a question that often comes up in our dealings with global policy makers who spend huge sums on scientific research while simultaneously being fearful of its consequences. Many believe that it is somehow important for the economy in an undefined and non-quantifiable manner, or that it is some kind of logical next step along the path that starts with scientific curiosity. Perhaps a better way of viewing technology would be as a mechanism through which science is applied to meet the needs of society, and that holds true whether the needs of society are getting rich quick, curing cancer, or both.

But there is another less beneficial view of technology. The idea that technology is responsible for environmental degradation, especially when coupled with population growth, is a powerful one that has held true since the industrial revolution. It is human nature to fondly imagine an agrarian pre-industrial utopia, while forgetting the regular plagues and famines that resulted in an average life expectancy of 35 years in pre-industrial Britain.  The idea that technology is a bad thing is a situation that has existed for much of the 20th century and persists into the 21st, partly as a result of confusion between technology itself and those individuals and corporations who control and exploit it.

But it is time for a change. In fact a change is inevitable. Human history is littered with technological advances that have changed everything, and much faster than anyone could have imagined.  The agricultural, industrial and information revolutions have resulted in massive changes to the economy, society and the way in which we interact with the environment.

Since the second world war, science and technology have moved faster and had a more profound impact on human society than at any other point in human history. We have moved from black and white television exploding onto the market in the early 1950s to more than 800 million people using Facebook within 60 years. While television took 3 decades to diffuse around the world, Facebook did it in 3 years. Technology has driven economic growth around the world and led to vast improvements in the quality of life for much of the global population, but it has come at a price: the rise of consumerism has resulted in environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale.

It is time to reappraise our relationship with technology and take control of its direction. With an increasing global population becoming ever more affluent, the pressure on resources coupled with climate change will inevitably lead to more wars, water shortages, famines and mass migration. Or will it?

If profound economic, societal and environmental changes are inevitable then why do we still address them in the same way we have for millennia, by being helplessly reactive? In the 21st century, science and technology has advanced to a stage where we can start taking control of the fruits of scientific progress rather than being powerless in the face of their development and exploitation.

We already have many of the technologies we need to address major global problems such as water shortages and disease, and there is no reason why inevitable environmental disasters such as oil spills still have to be tackled using antiquated technology when a hundred million dollars could give us the technologies to reduce the impact of oil spills to almost zero. Many other emerging technologies are being developed that would allow the world to support 10 billion people without compromising the tremendous growth in quality of life that has taken place over the last century.

At Cientifica we establish  how we can harness technologies for the global good. While we still lack the political will and necessary international institutions, we now have the knowledge and the tools to make the transition from being mere consumers of, and in some respect slaves to technology, to making use of  the new scientific revolution to mitigate and minimise global risks.

While it would be foolish to claim that the wise use of science and technology will usher in a utopian age, there is little doubt that we now have the tools to create a sustainable and responsible world where human suffering and environmental degradation can be alleviated while maintaining economic growth.

Plenty of news about artificial meat this weekend will give anyone dealing with public acceptance of science something to think about.

Chemical & Engineering News reports that “Hanna L. Tuomisto, a graduate student at the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, and M. Joost Teixeira de Mattos, a microbial physiologist at the University of Amsterdam, used a modeling approach called life-cycle assessment to estimate the environmental impact of growing one type of cultured meat. Life-cycle assessment estimates the impact of every stage of a process, from raw materials to final disposal. The team examined a hypothetical scaled-up version of an existing laboratory process that uses cyanobacteria as a nutrient and energy source to produce meat resembling ground beef.”

Add to that “Researchers at Utrecht University have calculated that an initial ten stem cells could produce 50,000 tons of meat in two months“ an “An Oxford University study found that this process would consume 35%-60% less energy, 98% less land and produce 80%-95% less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional ones“ and we arrive at a rather uncomfortable ethical dilemma for anyone proposing a meat free organic future.

It does, however, highlight the way in which emerging technologies such as regenerative medicine may have wider effects than their currently proposed uses.

Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and re evaluate what we are doing and why, something my good friend Doug Mather of the Creation Company has been urging people to do for years. It is very easy, whether in science or in business to develop myopia or tunnel vision, concentrating so hard on one particular task or goal that the rest of the world slips by almost unnoticed.

I find my release from the pressures of keeping up with science and running a number of businesses by hill walking – getting blown around on the top of Pen-y-Ghent or picking my way through the granite pillars of the Sierra de Guadarrama allows me to switch off from email and phone calls for long enough to ponder the big issues rather than picking through the daily list of to do’s.

Part of this big picture thinking led to the publication by the World Economic Forum yesterday of a new paper I authored with Andrew Maynard where we set out how we see the Role of Technology Innovation in an Increasingly Interdependent, Complex and Resource-constrained World.

You can download the full paper here, but in summary we are asking a very simple question – How can technology be best used to improve the lives of everyone on the planet?

While there have been some recent backlashes against technologies recently, and at many meetings of NGOs I attend there is some deep suspicion that technology is the result of  a sinister conspiracy by governments and businesses, technology has almost always been a force for good.

Obvious examples are the harnessing of fire, and the invention of agriculture, which started the transition of humans from hunter-gatherers to philosophers and Internet addicts. But perhaps the most startling transformation over the past fifty years has been in medicine, with many diseases that were killers being irradiated or, in the case of an increasing number, becoming chronic conditions.  One hundred years ago few people who went into an operating theatre came out alive, now it’s the vast majority.

But that is all in the past, and while we often think that technology is chugging along quite nicely as we browse Facebook on our iPads, we have to take that steep back and wonder whether technology is capable of addressing the big issues? Can an iPad help with meeting the energy demands of an increasingly wealthy world, or help avert wars over scarce resources such as water?

The vision that we set out in the paper is one where we take a longer term view of emerging technologies and their uses. To enable the increasing range of emerging technologies to be harnessed for good of everyone requires some new thinking about why and how we develop technologies, as we explain over at the World Economic Forum’s blog.

Through the work of the World Economic Forums Global Agenda Councils, we are developing and deepening inter linkages between emerging technologies and groups looking at other global issues, from climate change to innovation.  In the scientific community we are preaching to the converted, but it is now time to take the message to the politicians and business leaders, the people who make the real decisions.

The Spectator provides something to lift the mood after the holidays with an editorial looking on the bright side of 2011.

Every day of this new year, some 200,000 people are likely to be lifted out of what the United Nations defines as extreme poverty: living on $1.25 a day or less. The United Nations estimates that 925 million souls are still in this category, but also that the tally fell by 98 million last year. Most of the improvement is in India and China. The invisible hand of the market does not wear a wristband saying ‘Make Poverty History’. But that is its effect.

The article list of lot of other reasons to be cheerful, and while In Europe we are dealing with recessions and spending cuts, it’s worth remembering that the fruits of our technological progress over the last twenty years didn’t just produce iPhones and 3D TVs!

Britain is becoming cleaner, as can be seen in the air quality figures. The level of unpleasant chemicals in the atmosphere has fallen by a quarter over a decade, according to government measurements. Carbon, of course, is not pollution — but even if it was, the average person in Britain emits 20 per cent less of it than five decades ago, according to the World Bank. We jet around more, use dishwashers with abandon and build houses with twin garages, but the technology we employ is cleaner and greener. It uses less fuel because consumers like low running costs.

I spent some time in the ever fascinating city of Geneva this week for some meetings with the World Economic Forum where, as always, we are trying to figure out what to do about the world right now while trying to understand how the future will look – hopefully better than the present is the short answer!

One of the problems with predicting the future is that it is very easy to be horribly wrong. Predictions tend to fall into two camps, the incremental and the disruptive. The incremental view is that everything will continue along the current path while getting marginally better.  Following this path mobile phones were predicted to gradually shrink in size until they could be worn as wristwatches, but no one foresaw either the iPod/iPhone or text messaging.

On the disruptive side predictions involve huge shifts and changes, with for example manufacturing being replaced with nanotech and biotech, or, as every investor gets told by every entrepreneur, new products emerge which blow away all competition and disrupt the entire market.

While the first approach shows a lack of imagination, the second perhaps indicates a rather over active imagination, and the true path of the future lies somewhere in between – but not, I should caution, at some midway point.

This becomes important when I work with organisations on corporate technology strategies – how to keep an eye on the future and an option on potential disruptive technologies while maintaining growth in the current business and of course being able to respond to emerging opportunities? For many corporate people, the constraints of their organisation means that while they really do understand their business and markets inside out, they often end up either overspecialised, or over sensitive to internal business drivers that cause the bigger picture, and with it sometimes the bigger opportunities to be missed.

This became apparent when discussing the issues facing the chemical industry. Many resources are in increasingly short supply, and this may be political, such as rare earths, or structural, such as most metal ores where all the high quality ore has long been mined out. While there is a lot of discussion about how to manage resources, one of my major themes recently has been whether we can replace them?

This becomes crucial when you look at our dependence on resources. Lithium, for example, is a very abundant element, but only in a few areas such as Bolivia and Chile does it occur in sufficiently high concentrations to make the mining and processing of it for the lithium ion batteries that power the world economic. It only takes a bit of political instability or an earthquake to bring the world to a very sudden halt, as we saw with oil process in the 1970’s.

Nanotechnology and industrial biotechnology both have huge potential for replacing scarce resources, in the case of biofuels by moving to a second generation where the feedstock doesn’t require the replacement of food crops (or rainforest) with fuel crops, and in nanotechnology by creating entirely new materials. But in both cases, this is something we have to start doing now, rather than waiting for a crisis and expecting to be able to respond quickly enough.

So why were we discussing issues like this with the World Economic Forum? Simple, we’re in a bit of a mess at the moment, and with an extra 3 billion people on the way, all requiring food, land, houses, cars, healthcare, phones, laptops, energy and jobs we have a good idea what the problems will be. What we have to do now is start to imagine how we can stave off the worst effects of this huge and mounting pressure on resources without triggering waves of migration and war.

While the World Economic Forum is trying to create a Global Risk Response Mechanism, I argue that we need to create a system that will allow is to be proactive about risks. While technology cannot mitigate the effects of another banking crisis, and may indeed have contributed to it, we can make some large steps forward in addressing resources, health and climate change.

While accurately predicting the future is difficult, one of the biggest risks that we face, and one with implications far larger than the credit crunch, is not being ready for the future. In an increasing number of businesses and organisations that I work with are getting that message, but the real question is whether governments and policy makers will listen?

Nanomaterials Producers React To Criticism Of Their Business Models

I don’t like nanomaterials companies very much. In fact they are usually nothing but trouble. If they are not squandering huge amounts of investors money chasing non existent markets then they are having messy legal spats with competitors and suppliers, or even prancing around bringing hugely expensive but ultimately pointless libel suits against anyone who questions their business model. Anyway, not to worry, most of them have either gone bust or found something more useful to do with their nanotech expertise than trying to put carts before horses and good riddance.

I’ll be doing my best to avoid a lynching at tomorrow’s Nanomaterials 2010 conference where I will be talking about “Trends and opportunities in the nanomaterials marketplace” – something I’m pretty sure that I will be able to manage without jumping up and down yelling “nanomaterials are the new gold so give me all your money” (actually as we and the World Gold Council proved a while ago, Gold is the new Gold).

However we do need to make use of nanomaterials to address a number of pressing issues caused by rising populations and declining resources unless we all want to go back to the Dark Ages, and this is where I think the opportunities lie, and perhaps this time it won’t be just large chemical producers who can take advantage.

If we look at most of our current crop of ‘sustainable’ technologies, from hybrid vehicles to wind turbines and solar arrays they are rubbish. There is absolutely no comparison with the elegance of nature’s solutions, almost all of which are built from the bottom up and which I often refer to as ‘materials by design’, a subject of eternal debate with my nanoclastic colleague Dexter Johnson. We need to start thinking seriously about how we can use our new found control over the properties of materials to address resource issues, create clean water and of course double food production in the next forty years, not producing tons of stuff that no one will ever want just because we can.

I spent last weekend in a rather hot Doha (Qatar), surrounded by Emirs, Queens, Princes and Prime Ministers at the World Economic Forums Global Redesign Initiative meeting. It’s an organization I have been involved with for the past six years, through both the Technology Pioneers program and the Global Redesign Initiative.

As the world changes at an ever increasing pace, with new challenges from the financial, technology and natural worlds coming thick and fast, there have been questions over whether international institutions, from the United Nationals to the International Monetary Fund are able to cope.

“Today’s institutions are organized to solve yesterday’s problems” – Mark Malloch Brown, World Economic Forum Global Redesign Meeting, Doha, May 2010

A large part of the change, from the time when most institutions were set up in the aftermath of the second word war has been the explosive growth in communication. When the UN was founded television was only available to a very few people, whereas in 2010 almost five billion people have access to the Internet. The proliferation of Internet enabled devices from iPhones to sensors and the expanding use of social networking such as Twitter and Facebook would have been unimaginable even thirty years ago when the Internet was still an emerging technology.

But technology can present a hazard as well as a risk. While presenting many opportunities that benefit the planet such as raising awareness of global issues and encouraging international cooperation, the Internet can also be used for identity theft and spreading pornography, or even challenging the legitimacy and authority of governments.

With all emerging technologies to date, from the Internet to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the understanding of the implications by governments and international institutions has lagged way behind the deployment of the technology.

The same is true for the emerging technologies of the 21^st Century. Nanotechnologies, synthetic biology and geoengineering have undoubted potential for good, especially in proactively addressing the issues which will inevitably arise in a world where nine billion people face increasing competition for resources, from food and water to power and natural resources. But equally inevitable is the potential for misuse, from home brew bioterrorism to environmental pollution, and in the case of geoengineering the potential for global disaster even though technologies may have been deployed with the best of intentions.

These emerging technologies, and their inter-linkages with civil society have the potential to shape and reshape our world even more profoundly than the Internet, and the ease of access to information and computing power means that in the 21^st century world changing breakthroughs are as likely to come from the mind of student as from a large multinational corporation.

The reactive nature of institutions is inherent in their nature, and we are proposing the creation of a mechanism to support faster, more fact based decision-making, and to provide the knowledge which would enable a proactive approach to be taken to both the risks and the opportunities arising from 21^st Century emerging technologies.

The full proposal for the Centre for Emerging Technology Intelligence is contained in the WEFs Global Redesign Initiative report, and you can also download a copy here.

I’m happy to say that the idea is receiving increasingly strong support from both Governments and companies who are increasingly realizing that in today’s world, taking a passive and reactive approach to global issues will be always more expensive than developing risk avoidance technologies in advance.

You can see (and hear) more about the WEF Global Redesign Initiative below

The Guardian follows up on the Nature article last week which indicated that most applications of GM crops have been successful.

It’s sad to see the the first reaction of many of the anti GM side of the debate is to attempt to portray the writer of he Guardian article as biased or beholden to big GM business in some way. If that’s not sufficient then another commenter raises the oft cited ‘ethical’ objections along the lines of

- Agro-chemical companies work for profit
- That profit has to come out of someone’s pocket
- That someone is first and foremost the farmer, and always has been.

I’m often shocked by the naivety of the anti technology arguments, especially that if someone makes a profit it then the technology must automatically be bad. Profits means that people are employed and taxes get paid which pays for all the wonderful services we take for granted. If there wasn’t any money in it, then we wouldn’t have most modern crops, drugs, electricity. computes, mobile phones…

Unless the farmer has a lower IQ than the seeds he is planting, it will be simple economics which determine whether he uses GM or non GM seed. Feed your familay and sell your surplus.

That’s all there is to technology diffusion, whether GM, nanotech or anything else. It is the ultimate form of democracy, because it is us, the people, who eventually get to choose whether a technology is used or not, not politicians, companies or single issue campaign groups.

Time For Plans B, C and D?

The vehemence with which Nigel Lawson has been attacked following todays article in the Wall Street Journal is hardly surprising, but I found the attacks from the scientific community surprisingly short sighted and naive.

The thrust of Lawson’s article, that adaptation may be a better strategy than the futile search for a global agreement has enraged many, but the human race has been so successful precisely because it is adaptable – from Kalahari Bushmen to Eskimos there are few environments where our race hasn’t been able to scratch out some kind of existence. However it also seems clear that the world pins its hopes on getting the major global governments to agree on anything then we are doomed anyway.

Finding a mechanism to limit the emissions of greenhouse gasses must be a priority, but in the absence of a global agreement then its up to the scientific community to come up with the solutions, something even Lawson acknowledges.

And beyond adaptation, plan B should involve a relatively modest increased government investment in technological research and development—in energy, in adaptation and in geoengineering.

I think the Cat in the Hat got it right, when clearing up the snow he tried little cats A to Y, but little cat Z was the one with the VOOOM under his hat that cleared up the mess. The greatest danger is that we stick to some kind of idealistic and utopian dream of a low carbon world without considering any other options, and then we one day find that it is too late. I’m a little concerned that many in the scientific community are so unworldly as to believe that the worlds major economies will hobble their economic growth and fork over a big chunk of GDP to various dodgy and corrupt regimes in order to attempt to maintain the climate in its current state – something the planet can’t even do in the absence of humans.

Given the track record of the UN over the last sixty years it’s hard to pin any hope of Copenhagen, Mexico or wherever the next jamboree will be. It is only sensible we should also look at the alternatives, adaptation and geoengineering as prominent among them as being boiled alive. I’d fork over a more than modest chunk of GDP towards science, and not only in the hope of averting environmental disaster, but in the hope of making sure that we have the economic growth to be able to do something about an ever growing list of global problems.

Issues as important as this are far too important to be left to politicians.

The recent news about the debt problems in Dubai contrast with the glitzy no expense spared hotels and conference centres where I spent last weekend with the World Economic Forum, but probably do more to highlight the importance of a diverse technology enabled economy than any amount of lobbying we could do.

While Dubai has led the way for the emergence of the Gulf as a major economic centre, most of my technology work has been done in the neighbouring states, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia who, while perhaps being slightly envious of Dubai’s dash to pre eminence in the region with the worlds tallest tower and an indoor ski slope have been taking a more measured approach to development. Most of these countries have been playing the property game too, but also backing this up with major investments in science and technology, and that doesn’t just mean taking stakes in AMD or IBM but making sure that technology fits into the local economy.

The reasons to do this are all the more obvious this week, and in a region with tiny but fast expending populations, ensuring that jobs are created for locals rather than overseas labourers is of increasing importance. It is estimated that Saudi Arabia has 25% youth unemployment, and in a country where 40% of the population is under 15 the petrochemical industry isn’t going to provide all the jobs that will be needed to prevent social unrest.

What is? Increasing the size of the manufacturing sector is a key policy goal in many states, and Mubadala, one of Abu Dhabi’s investment agencies has already announced plans to build an AMD fab in the emirate but this is only the start. The longer term goal, and the financial and political situation in many of the the Gulf states allows the luxury of long term planning, is to develop new technology based industries in materials, aerospace, semiconductors, renewable energy and pharmaceuticals but based on a whole host of new and emerging technologies such as nanotech, industrial biotech and regenerative medicine.

While Dubai may in the eye of a storm right now, the longer term prospects for the region look as bright as the desert sun.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

It’s interesting that IBM seems to be the partner of choice for a number of nanotechnology in emerging economies such as Bulgaria and Egypt, (where there are large number of vacancies, including the post of “Centre Director.”)

IBM, as we all know, was responsible for the STM/AFM and holds a wide variety of nanotechnology related patents, including some fairly fundamental ones on carbon nanotubes. Partnering with these new centers allows IBM to double dip by providing services (now the core business) and encourage the exploitation of its patents – something that looks like a pretty smart strategy to me.