kqed nanotechnology

saturday morning. just finished clearing the two foot high three feet deep compressed snow pack that the plough deposits after any big snowstorm at the end of the driveway. happily, while i was digging i located my saturday morning newspaper and so now i am going to watch a mini-documentary and read the paper and then get around to feeding the sleepover kids their breakfast.

nope. by the sounds of the bleating and chirping coming from the family room, it sounds like i'll have to reverse that order!

kqed is a public broadcasting company based in san francisco, california. the following program comes courtesy of kqed.

if the future is what the present can bear. then apparently we can bear and have been bearing the development of nanotechnology such that it is now a common element in the manufacturing and constituent elements of many items we use in our daily lives.

so what is nanotechnology? from lawrence berkeley national labs to silicon valley, researchers are manipulating particles at the atomic level, ushering in potential cures for cancer, clothes that don't stain, and solar panels as thick as a sheet of paper. nanotech is here now. it’s in our sunscreens, sports equipment, electronics, cosmetics, and experimental medicine. i didn't know that. did you?

to learn more, then you need to view the following program originally aired on kqed.



if after viewing this program you’d like to know more - and understand it - then visit understanding nano for more answers and information.

if you’d like to see where nanotechnology has already entered your life in products you undoubtedly own then have a look at the project on emerging nanotechnologies.

fellow blogger the j curve says this: “nanotech is the nexus of the sciences. the history of humanity is that we use our tools and our knowledge to build better tools and expand the bounds of our learning. empowered by the digitization of the information systems of biology, the nanotech nexus is catalyzing an innovation renaissance, a period of exponential growth in learning, where the power of biotech, infotech and nanotech compounds the advances in each formerly discrete domain. this should be a very exciting epoch, one that historians may look back on with no less portent than the industrial revolution.”

my wish - and like so many of my wishes these days - it's a big one. let's not let nanotech do to us and our planet, what the industrial revolution did. let's be sure to consider every aspect of the technology, the by-products, the social fallout, and the long-term benefits and weigh them against the price tag.