Through the nanotech looking glass

Boy, the struggle of one lone nanotech blogger trying to make a living sure does occupy a great deal of space in the ruminations of a few large nano organizations with actual budgets and employees. What exactly is everybody worried about? That I just might accomplish what I had set out to do four years ago -- cover nanotechnology in a way that gets the general public engaged? I think I'm accomplishing that a little more every day. But, apparently, large nanotech research and financial institutions -- not to mention a Big Three auto company -- that could buy and sell my house and my neighbors' a hundred times over are hanging on every word I write.

Not offering me work, mind you, but just very, very worried about what this "downsized" bankrupt blogger might say.

I'm pulling an all-nighter tonight, so my perspective might be overly influenced by exhaustion and caffeine, but if I'm really as big of a nutcase as posts like the one above indicate, why am I seeing my audience grow among nanotech businesses, institutions, investment houses and educational programs? Well, anecdotally only, of course, they tell me that I make this subject interesting, entertaining and consider it more objective than those who write about nanotech while being a "player" in it at the same time.

But there's something twisted about large nanotech organizations that are quick to comment about what I write (indicating they do read every word), then stand silently, voyeuristically by while I go through the publicly humiliating process of trying to rescue my home (the blog plea was last-ditch Plan Z), then emerge once more to question my integrity for accepting work from a nonprofit think tank whose mission it is to help educate the public about nanotechnology.

I've often thought that I slipped inside the looking glass and into a strange, quantum world when I began to write about this stuff. Let me get this straight: The business and scientific communities writing about themselves is considered "objective," while a knowledgable outsider who helped pioneer nanotech journalism is considered "not objective." Curiouser and curiouser.

Now, here's something I never would have imagined -- a wealthy jet-setter with an organization behind him would go out of his way to gleefully throw pot-shots at me -- an unemployed writer trying to save his house and family. Meanwhile, I continue to spread the word to a larger segment of the population, helping them understand what the nanotech business and research communities are up to.

OK. Enough of that now. Back to work.