These disciplines have already begun to overlap and many scholars believe that because of this rapidly accelerating convergence, a technological event called the SINGULARITY will occur. The amount and rate of change resulting from it, will cause such vast difference in how we work, live, and play that we can't possibly conceive of the changes that will come about after that time. Think of it as the  new industrial revolution on steroids, viagra, and hallucinogens all at the same time. All predictions are that it will happen this century and most peg the date to sometime before 2030 - 2045. In addition, Ray Kurzwiel says that computers will be have a desktop human brain equivalence by 2010. If you read the home page information, he might just be right. . . again.

Consider the millions of years it has taken nature to evolve the human DNA. In less than twenty years since we began to play with it, we have mapped the genomic sequence and can now alter DNA in a matter of weeks in a lab. The next natural progression leads us to altering DNA in vivo. Isn't it natural to consider why should we have to live with disease if we can prevent it.

How's this for something profound - Sufficiently mature DNA sequencing and synthesis technology will allow us to decouple the 'designs' of life
from the constraints of direct descent and replication with error - Drew Endy

Nanotechnology already allows us to place artificial components and assemblies inside cells, and to make new materials using the self-assembly methods of nature. It's now possible to produce composites that combine the most desirable properties of different materials. We can create characteristics that are great improvements on nature or in combinations that nature does not produce. Nanotechnology provides an entry into areas as inks and dyes, protective coatings, medicines, electronics, filters, energy storage and usage, structural materials, and many others that we have yet to anticipate.

Researchers at UofC Berkley have developed a nanowire microscope smaller than a red blood cell that can be tuned to emit different colors. A major advance in the field of nanophotonics, this microscope could give researchers a better understanding of how cells work, and offer clues about what happens when things go wrong, as occurs with cancer. To test the device, the researchers measured the light transmitted through a sample and were able to resolve the spacing of lines to about 100 nanometers. (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter) The nanowire, is smaller than the wavelength of the light that the nanowire emits. A single nanowire costs about less than two cents.

Here's an interesting prediction from the US National Intelligence Council, December, 2000 - "Discoveries in nanotechnology will lead to unprecedented understanding and control over the fundamental building blocks of all physical things. Developments in this emerging field are likely to change the way almost everything—from vaccines to computers to automobile tires to objects not yet imagined—is designed and made. Self-assembled nanomaterials, such as semiconductor “quantum dots,” could by 2015 revolutionize chemical labeling and enable rapid processing for drug discovery, blood content analysis, genetic analysis, and other biological applications."

The nanotechnology industry has proven the preceding to be true, and then some. Nanotechnology is an enabling technology, and not an indistry that can be segmented by itself. Even in the down times of late 2008, nanotechnology advances and breakthroughs have not slowed. Indeed, they are gaining momentum and nano materials, particles, and composits are infiltrating almost every business from farming to medicine, to space exploration.

Man's problem with nanotechnology, biology, etc., has been his inability to see those small things. Now that we have discovered ways to see ever smaller things, we can begin to understand them. This is no different than other fields of scientific endeavor. Early on, we had the idea the machine would rule the world. We have all read science fiction stories of robots or computers taking over the world. Fears of the grey goo and nanorobots taking over the world is no different. These fears are founded in our inability to understand the technology. As we have learned to use robots for automobile production and vacuum cleaners, so too will we find uses for nanorobots, such as for delivering drugs to the body and eliminating some current scourges of mankind, like diabetes, cancer, and more.

Historically, the black plague and other scourges to mankind were feared to the same extent as nanotechnology is today. Once we could see the actual bacteria causing the problem, we found a way to solve the problem. Think of polio before Jonas Salk. Now we no longer hear of polio. What we see we can understand. What we can understand, we no longer fear.

Nanotechnology, while evolutionary, will appear revolutionary as we begin to see benefit in many different areas about the same time. The changes to our lives will become both disruptive and radical at the same time. Not because of the technology as a whole, but because of the evolutionary knowledge gained.

Before you get too comfortable with the whole nano thing, nano is not the end game. Sub atomic structures have yet to be understood and exploited – that’s next. Consider that a carbon atom is about .14 nanometers and has sub particles within it. An atom is not a single particle as was once thought; it has parts that make it up. The nucleus of a carbon atom is about 3 femtometers in diameter. A femtometer is one millionth of a nanometer. 

Speaking of things femto, in a breakthrough for research during 2004, on nerve regeneration, a team of scientists has reported using femtosecond (a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second) laser pulses to precisely cut individual axons of nerves in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, one of the most versatile and widely used experimental organisms for genetic and biomedical research. The nerves severed by this precision technique regrew within 24 hours, often with complete recovery of function. The project was a collaboration between applied physics researchers at Stanford University led by Adela Ben-Yakar and biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, led by Yishi Jin and Andrew Chisholm. The duration of the laser pulses used in the study was 200 femtoseconds, and the pulses were delivered at a rate of one thousand per second. The delicate axons severed by the procedure, with no apparent damage to surrounding tissue, were on average just 0.3 microns, or 300 nanometers, in diameter (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter).

Folks, we’re talking small stuff. To our current batch of scientists, nanometer sized objects seem like giants. Molecular and atomic are the next smaller dimensions to be conquered

Plug in - Size matters

                                      Keep an open mind -

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." - Albert Einstein