0.7 21st century technology, digital displacement, and the role of  (Page 8/17)

In any case, Nanotechnology is one of three converging technologies that are materially changing how we live, how well we live and how long we live. The other two technologies are biotechnology and information technology. Jointly and separately, these three technologies are already bearing low-hanging fruit, especially in the energy industry and in biomedicine. Other potential benefits that may be ready to harvest in a decade or so. Still another group of blessings may accrue in 50 years or more.

Nanotechnology operates in the realm of the incredibly small. It involves the measurement, manipulation and fabrication of objects of size from one nanometer to about 100 nanometers, a nanometer being one billionth of a meter. Your thumb is about 10 million nanometers wide. As we will see, the size and shape of nano-particles account for a large number of their highly useful applications. One particularly important property is that in the nanoworld, as we move to the nanoscale, the surface area of material increases relative to volume. Also at the nanoscale, soft material can become ultra-strong. Insulators can be made conductive. Opaque materials can become transparent. Eventually nanoscientists expect that they will be able to manipulate the inner workings of several kinds of molecules, yielding applications not yet imagined.

Biotechnology enfolds innovations in biomedicine, agriculture and now even new innovations in information technology. It has become tightly interlaced both with nanotechnology and information technology generally. The information technology revolution that brought the age of computing now promises to combine with nanotechnology to yield another new age of quantum computing.

The effects of convergence of these technologies will be far-reaching, with potential social and economic benefits that are very, very large. However, these technologies especially nanotechnology also carry future societal risks and perils, as little is yet known about the implications of some nanoparticles for human health and the environment. For a discussion of the health and environment risk involved in nanotechnology, see Malcolm Gillis, “Health and Environmental Implications in Commercialization of Nanotechnology,” prepared for the 10th Annual Rhodes Conference, Greece, 2012.

The emerging coalescence of biotechnology, nanotechnology and information technology holds out prospects for economic and social benefits that could make those of the past half century appear pale by comparison. (See Figure 7-1) This claim does not refer to breakthroughs that may be made “one day,” but rather applications from the science we already know, the fruits of discoveries already made.

Advances in molecular-level science furnish ample justification for this claim, not only in biology, but in nanoscale science and information science. To illustrate, consider one aspect of the Bio-Nano interface. Virtually all the molecular rungs on the chemical ladders of the human genome have been identified. So we now have an almost complete “parts list” for a human and some animals. Now, tissue engineering is furnishing parts of organs to replace damaged body parts.