This is the science of manipulating matter at an atomic or subatomic scale (1–100 nanometers) to create supersmart materials with entirely new properties or to manufacture objects at an atomically precise level. How small is a nanometer? It’s a billionth of a meter. How small is that? A human hair is roughly 100,000 nanometers wide.
The digital revolution is well underway, but there is potentially another, more powerful, revolution just around the corner. Nanotechnology could be profoundly transformative, radically reshaping modern manufacturing and potentially affecting distribution, retailing and environmental concerns too. Indeed, nanotech could be as important as the steam engine, the transistor and the Internet combined.
“The best scientist is open to experience … the idea that anything is possible.”
Ray Bradbury, sci-fi writer
Tiny factories of the future Modern manufacturing (and to some extent global capitalism) has been founded on the belief that large inputs are required and that economies of scale produce economic benefit. This won’t necessarily be the case in the future. Products could in theory be assembled using atomically precise nanotechnology “factories,” which will be exceedingly small. So small in fact that they could in theory be built inside people’s homes. Moreover, thanks to nanotechnology, products could be created only for the period in which they’re needed and then be reverse-manufactured to get rid of them. What does this actually mean? Think of the way in which products made of metal can be easily melted down and reused or turned into something else. Nanomanufacturing would be much the same—except returning nanomade products to their constituent parts would mean disassembling them back into atoms.
Personal Manufacturing Units (PMUs) would be able to assemble anything people wanted, much like a 3D printer. Again, the big difference is that the inputs will be atoms, not physical materials as we’re used to them. So if you want a new set of eight blue plates for a dinner party, they could be assembled in your own PMU. Thus, transport, logistics, inventory, waste disposal and retail all disappear right in front of your eyes. This ushers in a whole new economic system that is less reliant on physical resources and human labor. In other words, we no longer experience physical constraints.
By combining nanotechnology with robotics and computing, we can create “things” that can change into other “things.” This is the emergent field of claytronics, whereby three-dimensional objects can be turned into other three-dimensional objects—a boat into a car or even a large beef sandwich (shades of Transformers meets SpongeBob SquarePants). Or fully realistic human replicants that allow individuals to be in more than one place at once and converse either with real people or their programmable clones. Fully programmable matter essentially. Still not freaked out? Then how about an army of tiny self-assembling, self-aware robots that decide human beings have had enough fun and that it’s time for us to leave now.
Life-changing technology This is all a long way off, and may never happen at all. In the meantime, we will use nanotech to develop socks that will never need washing, suits that repel pollen, stain-resistant carpets, fully interactive digital curtains, self-cleaning windows, bulletproof suits, antimicrobial food packaging or wallpaper that changes pattern, color and scent depending on the season. Some of these ideas are here already—self-cleaning glass, for instance—but you can almost guarantee that the best is yet to come that many of the things we’ll invent 10, 20 or even 50 years hence will make even the most cynical eyes pop out on stalks.
“On the molecular scale, you find it’s reasonable to have a machine that does a million steps per second, a mechanical system that works at computer speeds.”
Eric Drexler, engineer and author
We’ll see bridges made of materials with fundamentally different properties at different points along the bridge (down to each millimeter or less—so that it would have differing strengths, or move differently, at various points) and many new materials that are much stronger and lighter than anything that’s currently available—for use as vast windows on giant passenger aircraft, for example. Airbus Industries have already created a vision of a future plane featuring a bionic element that mimics the bone structure of birds. It’s coated with a transparent biopolymer membrane, which eliminates the need for windows. Even the floors of such an aircraft could be made transparent using nanotechnology.
Such technology also promises to revolutionize medicine. An early example is the use of nanoparticles to treat disorders ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to cystic fibrosis. It’s likely that the first area of nanomedicine really to take off will be cancer treatments, due to the ability of nanoparticles to get inside the actual tumor cells and change them (hence drugs that are more potent but less toxic). Nanocapsules are already available for the treatment of ovarian and breast cancers, but these deliver drugs only to the neighborhood of cancer cells rather than to the individual cells, which will be a significant development.
As Eric Drexler, one of the pioneers in the field of nanotechnology, has observed: “After realizing that we would eventually be able to build molecular machines that could arrange atoms to form virtually any pattern that we wanted, I saw that an awful lot of consequences followed from that.” I’d say that’s something of an understatement.
the condensed idea
Terribly tiny technology
| timeline | |
|---|---|
| 2020 | Hugely efficient solar energy using new nanomaterials |
| 2025 | Nanotechnology materials used in 35 percent of consumer products |
| 2040 | Computers billions of times faster than anything currently available |
| 2042 | Claytronic products make commercial debut |
| 2046 | Ford introduce cars that can change color |
| 2050 | First commercially available PMU unveiled |
| 2065 | Common foodstuffs assembled via nanotech, not grown naturally |
| 2099 | Elimination of 99 percent of diseases |