Nanotechnology has been around for several decades as a serious field of scientific research, but only in the past fifteen years have major organizations emerged and started coordinating their efforts. We’ve only just begun to touch the surface of nanotechnology applications, and we’ll start seeing annual jumps in technological breakthroughs. There’s never been a more exciting or frantic pace in scientific research.

Changing the Future

Nanotechnology applications will encompass nearly all of human existence by the end of the century. Cars, jets, and space-faring vessels will be constructed with lightweight but stronger materials than are currently available. Look at the recent development of graphene paper, reportedly ten times as strong as steel but lighter. Researchers have also developed a new, sustainable form of plastic based on banana fibers, stronger and more renewable than petroleum-based products.

Besides construction materials, nanotechnology applications will include new fuel sources. Researchers attempt to perfect the hydrogen fuel cell for use in cars and other vehicles, a far cleaner and hopefully more efficient source of power for transportation. In 2007, Angela Belcher of MIT developed a new battery using an environmentally harmless virus, demonstrating that biotechnology and nanotechnology will become closely intertwined.

Humans will experience wondrous health improvements. Some nanotechnology applications include new medicinal transportation, helping to deliver drugs directly to tumors while sparing healthy cells, a huge advance in the global fight against cancer. Nanotechnology, combined with robotics, will yield the first functional prosthetic limbs to return control and feeling to amputees.

Even the computer you are reading this with was created using nanotechnology. In the future, computers will become even faster, more power efficient, and versatile as a result of nanotechnology developing new transistor materials and data storage equipment. As you can tell, nanotechnology will change all facets of human civilization, promising a society not unlike the utopia first predicted half a century ago.