Christine Peterson at Nanodot makes a good point about unrealistic expectations in nanotechnology by bringing up a 2000 prediction that full clinical application of "fleets of microscopic robots" would be underway by 2003.
The funny thing about predictions is that though they're often wrong about means, they can sometimes be surprisingly accurate about ends. The purpose of fleets of circulatory robots is the medical treatment of cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses. The lack of advanced nanorobotics isn't stopping researchers from using nanotech to attack those diseases in different ways.
PhysOrg.com has an article on how attaching polymeric nanoparticles to red blood cells turns the body's own blood into an ideal delivery system for medicine. This is a brilliant example of how synergising with the body's natural systems can allow us to elegantly do things that we're not yet capable of any other way.
There's nothing wrong with working towards a vision of nanorobotics, but it's important to be able to appreciate the danger of getting fixated on a hypothetical "ideal" technology and missing simpler and sometimes better solutions.
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