Nanotechnology and Fundamental Transformation
Ed Regis, author of "Nano: the Energy Science of Nanotechnology Remaking the World - Molecule by Molecule," defines nanotechnology as nothing less than 'the single biggest technological advance in the history of the species." Building with atoms will enable replacement of cells in the body, manufacture of precious materials, molecular robots, molecular computers, and the marriage of DNA to materials.

Eventually, it will enable the manufacture of anything, even at the consumer level. Nano means billionths of: a nanosecond is a billionth of a second, a nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or the size of a molecule. We have now seen the first successful demonstration of catalysis on a nanometer scale. Achieving molecular synthesis at this level represents an important step towards attaining practical nanofabrication. Molecules will be manipulated to make materials lighter, stronger, more flexible.

• At the quantum level, new states of matter can be created. Conductors that are one atom wide
may change the nature of computing and energy systems.
• The compression of time into nanoseconds is making 10ths and 100ths of a second seem slower, and athletes not racing against each other but against the clock are changing the entire
nature of many competitive sports, and even the spectating experience.
• When cameras are made smaller and smaller, even potentially the size of a chip, snooping
becomes more ubiquitous, and surveillance moves into even more private places.

Disks may store as many as 100 billion bits per square inch, and perhaps move to where the recorded area is at the atomic level. When the doubling of chip power becomes no longer feasible (when transistors in chips get down to 0.25 millionths of a meter), we may have to switch to optical and/or quantum computing. Smart cards may attain the power of a computer and perform daily activities.

Implications:
Managers will need to get ready for even more economic change than theyƒve already seen. There will be more people involved in discovery as opposed to production, speeding up the pace of technological change.

Thus, more and qualitatively different new applications of nanotechnology are likely to come on line very rapidly. Micro markets are emerging, with customer-driven, high technology strategies to customize products. The age of Àless” will continue to speed up - store-less shopping, ticket-less air travel, casino-less gambling, campus-less education, check-less banking, floor-less trading, travel-less meeting. New laws will have to be promulgated, because in areas of telemedicine, for example (monitoring, surgery, diagnostics at a distance) there will be conflicts with state- and nation-centered licensing patterns.

The distinction between service and manufacturing will practically disappear. And, eventually, the distinction between provider and consumer will also blur and disappear as nanotechnology enables us to manufacture more things from the molecular level anywhere. Issues of resource shortages will fade, as we synthesize resources from wood to oil (assuming oil is even necessary in the energy picture). Because of the rapid pace of technological change, we will see competitive and organizational pressures even more profound than those of the past decade.