They say bigger is better, but not in the 21st Century. It seems smaller is better nowadays. According to the dictionary, Nanotechnology is any fabrication technology in which objects are designed and built by the specification and placement of individual atoms, or molecules, or where at least one dimension is on a scale of nanometers. It is hard to imagine, as one nanometer is one billionth of a meter!

Nanotechnology is still in its infant phases, scientists suggest that nano products won’t be available in a useable form until 2010-2015. All areas of our lives as they are now will be touched by nanotechnology. The possibilities of nanotechnology are staggering. Imagine scientists being able to make new materials that we have never seen before, knives that never need sharpening, better planes, and spaceships to nanobots. Imagine nanobots as little robots that go into your body and fight disease. Maybe you have a genetic disease; just one tablespoon of the nanobots, and they will enter your body, and your DNA to find the defective gene and repair it. When you control where every atom is, the possibilities are endless. Imagine your computer being the size of a dime. It’s completely possible.

As with any great invention, the likelihood of hazards also increase. Maybe these new materials that we are making will enter our bodies and cause harm. Maybe the wrong people will get their hands on nanotechnology creating superweapons and superbombs that cannot be detected by normal radar. Supercells created by nanotechnology and put into humans could cause other health problems that we have no idea about at this time.

Of course, all of these are maybes, advancement in technology always has its price, but the human race is about advancement. Where would we be today, if we still believed the world was flat?