There's a search engine called Scirus for scientific information. A search performed on Sunday, 22 April 2007 with the search term 'nanotechnology' returned 637,500 results. Fortunately, we can winnow that down to 28,846 journal results and sort them by date. (We also found reference to 5,148 patents) So, here we go again... 23,489 of those journal articles were published after 2002 ended. That's 81% of the total. Similarly, 4,494 patents were filed since the end of 2002, 87% of the total.
Using 1987 as a base year, we find CAGR in journal publications of 42.03%, which would double in 1.98 years. For patents, we see a CAGR of 44.91%, which would double every 1.87 years.
And this is why Ray Kurzweil and the rest of the Singularity gang get excited. Remember we need annual growth of 14.87% to double in five years. Nanotechnology has got it in spades.
Last year's growth was 37.87%. Maybe they will take over the world... but I will explain later why I think growth in nanotechnology is a necessary, but not sufficent pre-requisite for the Singularity.
Note that the advanced search by year yielded 28,863 journal results (but it found all 5,148 patents )(one reason these types of databases drive academic researchers crazy--I hear Google Scholar is worse, and I'm afraid I'm going to find out soon...)
Click if you want to see the numbers
Year Journals Patents
2007 2,299 268
2006 7,810 1,668
2005 6,209 1,209
2004 4,237 850
2003 2,934 499
2002 1.992 275
2001 929 138
2000 509 70
1999 379 55
1998 267 28
1997 239 34
1996 197 17
1995 219 20
1994 257 7
1993 193 6
1992 68 4
1991 46 0
1990 35 0
1989 7 0
1988 30 0
1987 7 0
1986 0 0
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