Remember Carbon Nanotubes?

by Dwayne Phillips

Every generation seems to have its magic technology just about to burst on the scene and doing something wonderful and financially rewarding. Most of the time, nothing happens.

Back in the early years of this century, carbon nanotubes were the thing to discuss. We were to build computers thinner than a piece of paper. One excited engineer told a seminar that she was nervous every time someone handed her a piece of paper as she wasn’t sure what electronics were hidden inside that piece of paper. Carbon nanotubes where thinner than the carbon trace left on paper after writing with a pencil. Why, who knew what would happen in the next ten years.

Some of us had a pretty good guess about what would happen: nothing. And time showed that we were correct. Yes, some researchers are still researching carbon nanotubes and some researchers are actually doing a few real things with them. Still, the marketers ruined the topic by hyperventilating over it and hoping they would receive huge commissions on the sales of pretty much nothing.

Not many younger engineers today remember carbon nanotubes. That hype came and went 20 years ago.

Now, artificial general intelligence is right around the corner. Here is my prediction: it will be like carbon nanotubes. Great marketing material, but not really anything real.

Sorry, most of the time nothing happens. That is a general principle of general principles or general systems thinking or something that is almost universally true.

Pessimism? Realism? Wisdom borne of age? Or am I just a bit lazy? We can do better in the combination of science, engineering, and marketing. Let’s do better.