Nanotechnology,

or the tools of the very, very small world of molecules and atoms. "There's a plausible argument for everything, but there are detailed answers to nothing."

Philip W. Barth, Hewlett-Packard (c. 1999)

"There's Room at the bottom" quipped Richard Feynman.

...Nanotechnology and the hope of the not so large machines.

What | When | How | So?

The word nano is derived from a division of the world standard meter into one billion units, thus a nano-meter is one billionth of a meter in distance between measures.

The condition of nanotechnology today is that of just having started. That means there are incipient designs, tinkering and more expressed hope than empirically proven capacity to produce desired, let alone commercial, outcomes. Like all technologies, this technique must move through all four stages of development, two of which are mentioned below. Transitions

Invention stage to

Prototype stage

micro electromechanical systems (MEMS)

• dust or sand grain sized monitors or sensors polymers etched by x-ray beams (high frequency photons) hair-thin piece of silicon motion detectors to initiate inflation of air bags.
• Toyota has the smallest engine measuring .7 of a millimeter in size

Michio Kaku, Visions, pp. 269-70

IBM laboratories1989, scanning tunneling microscope detect individual atomic force fields1996, scanning tunneling microscope used to move molecules and form six sided ring molecules.1997, buckyballs (60 carbon atoms in a matrix) were used to construct anatomic sized counting device: an abacus. currently, carbon cylinders called nanotubes are hexagonal six carbon rings arrayed in a cylindrical manner to form an atomic sized fiber.

1. first step to making a microscopic, molecular on / off switch
2. bridge step to an atomic wide metal fibers to conduct electrons

---

"These micro-devices...are still a far cry from the self-replicating micro machines envisioned by the gurus of nanotechnology. If they are possible at all, it will be in the era after 2050."

p. 272

"Given the rapid progress in manipulating individual atoms, the first generation of simple molecular machines may very well be built within the next decade. But the full promise of nanotechnology (self-replicating molecular machines that can move molecules at will) remains purely speculative at this point."

p. 273

Moving molecules and building molecules are two very different functional tasks.

Instructing machines is one thing, designing self-activated machines is quite another. Robotics reveals that sensors and machines can simulate self-control.What remains to be demonstrated is how machines, even automated machinery, can possess the requisite artificial intelligence (AI) to sense conditions and act in non-detrimental ways.

Michio Kaku, Visions, pp. 269-74.

---

So what do Robots require to become more human?

---

---