Real World Nano

Of all of the issues facing humanity at the moment, climate change is arguably the biggest. So, could the world’s smallest technology be the answer?

In 2002, two scientific leaders at the US National Science Foundation, Mihail Roco and William Bainbridge, edited a report entitled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance. The report highlights nanotechnology for its ability to drive a convergence of technologies from multiple domains, including neuroscience, biotechnology, and computing, for the purposes of human enhancement.

What would it mean if biological and non-biological systems were not just fully connectable but fully interchangeable? That’s one of the questions that nanotechnology poses for us. More than any other field of scientific inquiry, nanotechnology operates at the basic scales of biology. DNA, for example, has a rough width of 2.5 nm. Viruses are roughly 20 to 250 nm. A bacteria is roughly 1000 nm. So, nanotechnology spans from the scale of individual biological molecules through the scale of simple biological systems to the scale of living cells.

Thanks, everyone, for your great comments to the first RWN post! Keep 'em coming. I'll respond there and in future posts. The question for today is: why does nano matter?

Welcome to Real World Nano, a new space to explore what happens when nanotechnology leaves the laboratory and makes its way into the rest of society. RWN is a partnership between NISE Net and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. Our goal is to launch a conversation about how the meaning, importance, and application of nanotechnology in society can be conveyed through informal science education.