Nano utopia is nigh – apparently.
A US research engineer says nanotechnology can place us on the path to freedom and happiness for all – or mostly all. Will society choose to take this path, however?
Technology, especially the latest emerging technologies, are supposed to make things easier and in many cases they do. But Tihamer Toth Fejel in Nanotech Now has put nanotechnology up there as the path to freedom and happiness for all – or mostly all.
His claim is that once we get over a couple of technological hurdles the exponential nanomanufacturing capabilities of what he calls the Productive Nanosystems will produce atomically precise products that will dramatically change the world. For example, Productive Nanosystems will reduce economic dependency to a square meter of dirt and the sunshine that lands on it.
Productive Nanosystems, he says, will mean redefining poverty and what we consider the dysfunctions in our society. Wish I guess begs the question what is happiness? If I have interpreted Fejel’s correctly, then Productive Nanosystems will allow nearly, if not all, people to control (or manufacture) our desires so, by our own definition, we can be happy.
Summer Johnson , in a post on The American Journal of Bioethics blog, finds these claims hard to swallow, and to a large extent I agree, though I admit Fejel’s commentary is lengthy, deep and complicated by economics and political implications that are beyond my expertise (and interest), so I may have mis-interpreted a lot of what he says. Society is a complex beast and the technologies Fejel mentions will likely all be possible (many in my lifetime), but how we decide to apply them is difficult to know – but fun to speculate about nonetheless.
Jason Major