With more than 200 reader comments submitted already it is clear that my column from earlier this week about America’s next frontier is a hot topic. I asked readers to tell me what they thought would be (should be) our next area of national expansion and the responses ranged from single words to essays and I learned a lot from all of them. But this is such a fertile and complex topic that no one reader (or even one columnist — me) can be expected to encompass it all in a single session, but we can try and will, right here, right now.

What our next frontier clearly isn’t is any single industry. Nanotechnology and biotechnology […]