Nanotech age

The Nanotech Age is a hypothetical age in the future covered in most forms of fiction (including SimEarth). According to Raymond Kurzweil, the Nanotech Age is expected to begin in the range from 2025 to 2050. This age would theoretically bring an end to the current Information Age which commenced in the 1990s; emphasizing transhumanism in addition to rapid technological development in all research fields.
Using present-day logic, the situation would reveal itself as the wealthiest people living in the eight wealthiest countries in the world (i.e., captains of industries, movie stars, businessmen) receiving nanotechnology services before everyone else However, it may widely separate each of the developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere apart from each other in economic and technological development. Pollution will also be cleaned thanks to nanotechnology scrubbing away more than 200 years of toxins, chemicals, and other pollutants from our land, sea, water, and ozone layer. (Ontario), Detroit (Michigan), and Nanticoke (Haldimand County, Ontario).
General theory
It was generally accepted that the Information Age started around in the 1990s; people were less aware about nanotechnology and more concerned with the nascent information technology being developed at that time. Innovations like the World Wide Web (invented in 1989) and e-mail (invented in 1971) would help people who shared a common interest in discovering nanotechnology to speak to each other with a level of unprecedented ease. At first, any information about nanotechnology was restricted to professional scientists, university professors, and hobbyists. Laymen were considered to have a lack of proper knowledge prior to the dawn of the 21st century. As the average consumer saw technological devices become smaller and cheaper, more people started to become curious about nanotechnology. Information about this technology started leaking into publications intended for the masses. More patents about nanotechnology-related inventions started to be processed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office
A group of people called transhumanists will fully embrace the coming technological advances that will come out of this Nanotech Age (in addition to the Singularity). Due to a decreasing amount of farmers and a rising urban population, scientists employing the latest in genetic engineering figure out how to make an unlimited amount of meat without killing animals) can be used to extract meat from its DNA when in vitro meat becomes acceptable in the Nanotech Age. Farmers, however, will continue to be useful in growing hydroponic vegetables that don't require soil. Once the earth's soil is no longer necessary for growing vegetable crops, more of it can be used to support forests that supply people with oxygen. Rising grocery prices are caused by traditional farming methods that need fossil fuels and inefficient maintainence of natural resources that may never be renewed again. Traditional farming methods make it more feasible for farmers to grow plant-based foods as opposed to raising animal livestock to be slaughtered for meat. However, advertising and packaging costs dominate the price of prepared foods in developed countries while the cost of the commodity itself dominates the price in developing countries.
A cure for cancer is expected to be found by the use of medicinal nanobots Currently, nanotech gene therapy has been able to kill ovarian cancer in mice without the bad side effects that cisplatin and paclitaxel cause; this technology could save 15000 women in the United States each year alone from dying of this disease. Nanotechnology will also be used to prevent dogs from getting fleas. The results promise to be highly accurate and the product promises to be inexpensive. In addition to this, the baseball bats of the future will made with carbon nanotubes so that the bat can be lengthened without increasing the weight. Antimicrobial nanotechnology will protect and prevent players in the National Football League from illnesses caused by bacteria in common places (i.e., sport towels, yoga mats, exercise mats) - most importantly Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (commonly known as MRSA).
Wet nanotech
Wet nanotech involves working up to large masses from small ones. It requires water in which the process occurs. It involves chemists and biologists trying to reach larger scales by putting together individual molecules. While Eric Drexler put forth the idea of nano assemblers working dry, wet nanotech appears to be the likely first area in which something like a nano assembler will achieve economic results. Pharmaceuticals and bioscience are central features of most nanotech start-ups. Richard A.L. Jones calls nanotechnology that steals bits of natural nanotechnology and puts them in a synthetic structure biokleptic nanotechnology. He calls building with synthetic materials according to nature's design principles biomimetic nanotechnology. Using these guiding principles should lead to trillions of nanotech robots, that resemble bacteria in structural properties, entering a person's blood stream to do medical treatments.
Other roles
Curbing fossil fuel usage
Decreasing our use of plastics (which have been known in the past to be laced with harmful materials) and concentrating household cleaners with more material per bottle will also reduce the number of trucks on the road. As a result, this environmental strategy will reduce the amount of pollutants and fossil fuels used. Fossil fuels are also used to make plastic; which draws a double-edged sword on the environment considering that more fossil fuels are being used than being found anymore. The world's supply of fossil fuels will run out by the year 2080 if the usage of fossil fuels are not either reduced or stopped. Our society will not necessarily fall back into the Stone Age or into World War III due to the lack of oil in the world; coal will supply the world's electricity for hundreds of years more before we need to be totally dependent on wind, solar, and nuclear fusion energy sources.
Fossil fuels will eventually become obsolete As technology improves and sources of fossil fuels start to run out of natural resources, solar power becomes more cost efficient.
Safety and security
During this time, people will allegedly also be able to upload their brains on to the Internet and an artificial intelligence unit will be able to patrol all of Europe for suspicious criminal activity (including European discussion groups, Eventually, artificial intelligence will be monitoring other continents on the face of the Earth (along with robotic police officers armed with non-lethal weapons). These weapons will include tasers that have been proven to be less lethal than the traditional pistol used by 20th century police officers. Robot police officers would have instant access to a person's criminal record, motor vehicle record, and tax information; thus identifying him or her as the suspect in a criminal investigation. The world's educational systems have lagged behind in preparing students for the Nanotech Age. once the economy is viable enough).
As a result, the huge factories that currently exist in the early 21st century will be demolished and re-wilded into forests (because the acreage needed for production will be redundant due to the extremely small size of the nanofactories). Just like the Information Age diverted the majority of the working adult population from manual labor in factories to jobs involving computers in offices, the Nanotech Age would shift the computerized workforce in a more complex direction. In addition to simple accounting and clerical duties, white-collar computer jobs would expand into work involving genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. Women currently outnumber men in the workforce due to the most recent recession to hit the male-dominated manufacturing and automobile sectors, making it possible that the labor force of the Nanotech Age will be female-dominated. Society will refocus itself to recognize the wife as the primary breadwinner and legal head of the household while the husband is the homemaker and the caregiver of the children.
The world's educational systems have lagged behind in preparing students for the Nanotech Age.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu