Grey Ooze dept.SIZE MATTERS "We are creators of new technologies... driven - this time by great financial rewards and global competition - despite the clear dangers, hardly evaluating what it may be like to try to live in a world that is the realistic outcome of what we are creating and imagining." - Bill Joy, chief scientist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. It's being called the next industrial revolution - and with one research institute announcing that hundreds of three-legged robots the size of a thumb, complete with onboard computers, powerful microscopes, and biosensors will be ready to manufacture nano-scale materials by the middle of this year, it's a science coming our way soon. Welcome to nanotechnology. Once the stuff of science fiction, nanotechnology now seems the scientists' equivalent of porn. But what is a nano? A nanometre is a billionth of a metre. If you put fifty million nanos side by side they'd be the width of a human hair. Where biotechnology manipulates genes to alter their natural molecular composition, nanotechnology aims to build pretty much anything atom by atom or alter existing structures. Not surprisingly, the bio-tech and pharmaceutical corporations, not to mention NASA and the trigger-happy US military, are busily developing and funding nanotechnologies. (The U.S. Defense Department announced it would be spending $180 million on it this year alone.) The scope and impact of nanotech was brought home last month by researchers in Spain working with Kraft Foods. They are developing nano-capsules containing the colour, fragrance, and taste of tens of thousands of different drinks. The consumer would buy a generic liquid containing multiple-choice capsules (ranging from fruit juices to colas to wines and spirits). By exposing these capsules to different ultrasound or radio frequencies, the desired concoction would be released. Households would likely need nothing more sophisticated than a microwave-type device. This technology is delivering a series of almost magical inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. Mihail Roco, the National Science Foundation's senior advisor for nanotechnology warns that, "a nano elite could command unlimited wealth and power" while Paul Thompson, a professor of ethics at Purdue University says "There are some disturbing similarities between biotechnology and nanotechnology. This is a technology that, once it's out there, can't be called back." As Pat Mooney of ETC group in Canada points out "Nanotechnology must become a serious issue for the Rio+10 summit If governments don't address it there, we could find ourselves dealing with social and environmental issues that will make biotech look insignificant." Maybe that's why one of the most influential figures in computing Bill Joy wrote in Wired magazine that self-replicating nanobots are more dangerous than nuclear weapons and urged scientists to abandon nanotech for the good of mankind. * To keep up to date with these issues check out the excellent www.etcgroup.org * The Institute of Nanotechnology will be holding a two day conference bigging up their new microscopic mates at the Dynamic Earth Centre in Edinburgh 24-25 April. www.nano.org.uk/dynamicearth.htm * GM test sites for the coming year have recently been announced check 'em out at www.geneticsaction.org.uk
