I’ve been readin a few articles about the wonders of Nanotech, and how we’re fast approaching a new industrial revoultion in terms of manufacturing with its widespread application, however I’m wonder as to whether the impact it makes will be a significant one, and what tangible benefits would it give to average joe if it did happen in the medical, economic, political and social environments?
A lot of the predictions about nanotechnology seem to come from Drexler and Kurzweil on one level or another. Kurzweil’s book ‘the singularity is near’ covers the subject in a few chapters. He feels nanotech will be mature by the 2020s. However many of his predictions he made in the 80s for life in 2000 and 2010 were optimistic. They are still happening, but he predicted them way too early (I think he predicted self driving cars in 2000 or 2010, can’t remember which. Either way DARPA is only beginning to develop test cases of self driving cars. And we have cars that can parallel park themselves, use cruise control, GPS to give directions and that can automatically override the brakes if you approach an object too fast, but that is about it as far as self driving cars. ie, computers can give directions, parallel park, override the brakes and do cruise control, but they can’t ‘drive’ like Kurzweil thought they could. You still need a human driver).
We already have nanotech in the form of chemistry and biology, so some of the predictions the author makes already are happening w/o waiting on the nanotech revolution (I get the impression the distinction between chemistry and nanotech is nanotech involves more mechanical and electrical engineering on the micron scale). We are already capturing and removing carbon from the air using various tools in biology and chemistry, so nanotech isn’t really going to revolutionize the process IMO.
But how much will it change the future? No idea. Hopefully and probably lots. However I have no idea what the timeline will be for the technology.
Kurzweil’s biggest hope with nanotechnology is blood cell sized bots that can augment the brain and help perform tissue repair inside the human body. That would be nice and I’m sure it’ll happen, but I think his timeline is optimistic (he says it’ll happen in the 2020s. Maybe the basic scientific knowledge to do it in a lab will happen in the 2020s, but that is a far cry from wide scale adoption of a safe technology by the public).
I haven’t got any specialist knowledge of the subject, but if Nanotech turns out to be all it’s cracked up to be, I think the eventual impact on humanity could be greater than the discovery of fire.
The possibilities are endless - better health, better agriculture, stronger building materials. It could do everything from clean your blood to growing buildings to protect crops.
Some of the predictions in that paper are reasonable. When they start talking about nanobots, they are talking about things that are laughably distant. I don’t care if some guy in a research lab can get a nano sized motor. In order to put it into production, you will need to make millions of them.
At the moment, it is just a challenge to get the semi-conducting carbon nanotubes separated from the conducting nano-tubes. Yes, it can be done reasonably well, but you still end up with only a higher % of the desired type. A single conducting carbon nanotube can ruin a transistor.
Then there is the difficulty of cutting the tubes to a specific length. Next on top of that, you have to remove the catalyst somehow without destroying the tubes. Which brings up the problem of defects that can be caused by the process used to remove the catalyst.
The Morph phone described in the article, is a device that makes use of the bulk properties of carbon nanotubes/graphene. Unlike traditional conductors/semi-conductors, carbon nanotubes can be bent and as long as there is a conductive path, the device can still function. Don’t think of them using single nanotubes as wires. I know of no mass production method of laying down one nanotube at a time. These are probably films of networked nanotubes or graphene.
There are a lot of devices out there using nanotechnology, but it is not what people usually think about when they think of nanotechnlogy. It certainly isn’t the stuff in Drexlers dreams. The devices are typically using bulk material properties of carbon nanotubes or nanoparticles.
Of course it’s always possible that some huge breakthrough will be made in the near future, but breakthroughs are too difficult to predict. What Drexler did was the easy part. Making it happen is what will be impressive.
My opinion is that nanotechnology will slowly creep into our lives the same way plastics did. They are new materials that will incrementally create new devices, and you will barely notice it happening.
Biology is nanotech. People talk of things like nanobots building a bridge, but they don’t mention that it’d take as long as growing a tree of the same size.
Now, there are a few specific technologies that could have some significant applications, like carbon nanotubes (happy 25th birthday, buckyballs!). But all too often, when people talk about nanotech, what they really mean is magic. The reasoning goes, “I can’t understand any technology that could perform task X. I can’t understand nanotech. Therefore, nanotech can perform task X.”.
Interesting quantum question. It supposes that there is a pre-determined future which it may or may not be possible to have foreknowledge of and then, potentially, try to knowingly direct it into a form other than what was intended. Probably something for another thread, but I vote that as the future doesn’t exist the notion of changing it (or leaving it intact, for that matter) is meaningless.
It seems to me that we will get to nano technology sooner by genetic engineering. In effect, a microbe is a nanomachine. It is a lot easier to tweak an existing microbe or even a plant to do what you want than to design a nanomachine from scratch to do it. If we want to remove plaque from our arteries, it will be easier to design a microbe to do it, than a nanomachine.
In molecular nanotechnology, they are in a situation where they have to build the tools to build the tools to create useful nanomachines. They will get there eventually, because we will want machines where they aren’t any reasonable biological precursors, but it won’t happen for awhile. biological nanotechnology is producing useful results now. http://www.syntheticgenomics.com/
I postulate that it takes about 3 times the estimated timeframe for a new technology to actually work as intended. This means we’ll see some nanotech “magic” in the 2050s, real 3D televisions in the 2040s and self-driving cars by the 2050s as well.
Biological “immortality” will be a reality in the 2300s and Interstellar ships ought to be a reality around the 2600s.
I agree, but I think most would not define this technology as nanotech. In fact, a microbe is considerably larger than the nanoscale, although the machinery that runs it may not be. OTOH, the machinery that runs a microbe is really just biochemistry. Perhaps a virus could be considered nanotech, but that is still very much biochemistry.
Of course, you also have to consider microchips nanotechnology. They are already selling chips at the 32 nm node. But this technology is really just an extension of old technology. There are no nanoscale moving parts.
I think that when people think of nanotechnology, they are thinking of NEMS (nanoelectromechanical systems.)
The machinery that runs any nanotech is basically chemistry. And the bio- prefix is only attached because the chemistry involved in living things is really complicated, but then, the chemistry of a manufactured nanite would be similarly complicated.
“In Star Trek, the holodeck is used for recreation during leisure time. I think this is unrealistic. If I had a holodeck, I would lock myself inside and never come out until I died of exhaustion. . . . I’m afraid the holodeck will be humanity’s last invention.”
