The interesting thing is in research at least, 'nano' is starting to deliver. We've had artificial molecular switches, motors, transistors, and other components

The interesting thing is in research at least, 'nano' is starting to deliver. We've had artificial molecular switches, motors, transistors, and other components for years but we have not been able to put them together. Now we're starting to organize these components to make 'machines' and systems. Not very complicated machines, but machines nonetheless. A great example of this is rotaxane containing metal organic frameworks. A rotaxane is molecule consisting of a ring on a rod. Make your molecule just right and you can get the ring to move back and forth using electric charge which allows you to store bits. Recently, there has been success of organizing these rotaxanes spatially by putting them in a self-assembling molecular space frame type structure called a metal organic framework. This is getting us closer to making ultra-high density data storage that just self-assembles. Some well respected researchers(not Drexler) are even starting to seriously consider robot arms capable of moving individual atoms. There is even a name for this sort of research: supramolecular chemistry. In short, 'nano' is coming back, it's just not going to be called nano.