Nanotechnology is popular and the public believes it's important.
An indication is that in addition to a regular meeting session on nanotechnology, there was a special two-day nanotechnology symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this February. The symposium wasn't part of the AAAS meeting. To get into it, you not only had to pay the AAAS meeting fees, but a special symposium access fee, and it was packed. Nanotechnology deals with objects from five microns to 50 nanometers in size. A nanometer is 10 to the minus 9th meters.