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It's the ultimate technology: nanotechnology -- the attempt
to build ordinary objects from the atoms up, molecule by molecule. So named because
its building blocks are the smallest pieces of matter, nanotechnology will give
us complete control over the structure of matter, allowing us to build any substance
or structure permitted by the laws of nature. Placing
atoms as if they were bricks, nano-machines could turn grass clippings into prime
sirloin -- directly, without cows. They could turn coal into diamond, and sheets
of diamond into rocket engines. Suitably reprogrammed, the tiny machines could
repair all of your body's ailing cells. Science fiction?
Alchemy? Craziness? Actually, scientists have already isolated individual atoms
and moved them at will, even using them to spell out words on a scale so small
that the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica can be written on the head of
a pin. Conceived by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard
Feynman and pioneered by the remarkable K. Eric Drexler, who earned the first
Ph.D. in the field he created at MIT more than a decade ago, nanotechnology is
astoundingly near. In Nano, acclaimed science writer Ed Regis introduces
us to the visionary engineers and scientists -- as well as the critics -- of this
imminent technological revolution and shows how their work may soon begin changing
the world as we know it. With fleets of assemblers churning out essential commodities
without human labor, the world economy would be transformed, famine and poverty
banished forever. With cell-repair devices coursing through the human body, aging
could be postponed, even halted, common diseases eradicated permanently.
But would this new world be a return to Eden or a rash step
into a dangerous future? Programmed differently, those same molecular machines
could become agents more potent than the deadliest viruses. Articulate,
intelligent, and marvelously entertaining, Ed Regis reports on the wonders and
perils of this important new technology -- and traces its profound philosophical
implications. Nano is the password to the next
century; our world will never be the same. Ed Regis
is the author of Who Got Einstein's Office? and Great Mambo Chicken
and the Transhuman Condition. He lives in Maryland. |
