It seems that at least once a decade the scientific / technical community will spawn a new “technological savior”. And this “savior” will become the new hope for the future. It will solve all of the worlds problems. Or at the very least it will make our work infinitely easier and our lives more enjoyable. From the late 80’s through the mid 90’s it was Virtual Reality. VR was going give every man, woman and child their own personal utopia. VR was going to revolutionize things like human communication, education and entertainment. Well, some say the moment of anticipation is the greatest. For VR and it’s techno-savior brethren that is definitely true. VR like many saviors has never materialized. Artificial Intelligence is another great example. People in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s believed that thinking machines were just around the corner. Today, though computing power has grown at an exponential rate, AI still hasn’t arrived.

The newest all-singing-all-dancing techno-savior is undoubtedly Nano Technology. Nanotech is basically the science of machines that are very very small. People believe that Nanotech will revolutionize everything from cleaning toilets to curing any and all human ailments. Nanotech will solve the food shortage, it will build homes for the poor, it will enable us to colonize space, it will cure Cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer’s. Plus, it recycles! It uses pollution and waste as fuel! Not to mention that once it’s developed it will be essentially free! Sounds like Jesus you say? Nope… it’s just nanotech.

PFFFFFFT!!! Nanotech is great… it will let us make smaller machines, smaller, faster chips, etc. But without the simultaneous advancement of many supporting technologies like massively scaleable networking and control systems, better AI, better data acquisition and about a dozen other things nanotech will be nothing more than an evolution of our current semiconductor manufacturing processes. So I doubt we’ll be seeing fuzzy clouds of nanobots swirling around making new skyscrapers out of piles of dirty diapers and burning tires any time soon.

Not unlike any other religion, technophiles just need something to believe in.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003 @ 10:35 pm on the category Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.