The great recovery (2)

May 11, 9:00 PMSF Environmental Policy ExaminerThomas Fuller

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In part 1 of this series, I make optimistic claims for a dramatic recovery from our current recession. Here I will try and back them up with figures.

I said that the recovery of the American economy and progress to unprecedented heights over the next 10 years would be led by nanotechnology, bio-technology and robotics.

Scirus.com is a database holding records of academic publications, some general interest articles and patent filings. For nanotechnology, for example, it holds records of 8,007 patent filings for nanotechnology. Now, some of them are me-too patents, some are copycats, and probably some are absurd. But gaming the system and foolish patents have always been a part of the patent process, so they shouldn't change percentages much.

Of those 8,007 patents that have nanotechnology in the title, abstract or text, 7,007 were filed in the past 5 years.  That's 88%. Almost a quarter--23%--were filed last year alone. That's one reason why I think nanotechnology will be to this century what electricity was to the last.

Biotechnology has been around a lot longer, so the numbers are larger. There are a total of 133,212 patent filings in the Scirus database. But again, 69,146 have been filed in the past 5 years, or 52%. And 14,475 were filed in the past year, or 11%.

Robotics sits in the middle of this package. There are 22,097 patent filings for robotics on Scirus. 9,992 have been filed in the past 5 years, or 45%. And 9% were filed in the past year.

These fields are set to explode on the scene today, changing just about everything from healthcare to defense to manufacturing, from transportation, to green technology to education.

The robotic legs on upcoming versions of domestic robots (yes, they will baby-sit), will transition into implants for those who cannot walk. The nanotech composite coatings used to protect materials and reduce friction will be in everything. The biotechnology wonders that will target tumors will be guided to their target by nanotech robots.

A senior executive at Google told me last year that the next 6 years would be more action-paced than the past 12--a timespan that covered the life of his company, the diffusion of the mobile phone and a whole lot more. And I think he was understating the issue.

But like I said earlier, it's going to be a wild ride.