"In its essence, nanotechnology is the coming ability to build products of any size with atomic precision."
That's a good basic definition of nanotechnology, and it's a good beginning to an excellent article by Sandra Mardigian.
Nanotechnology is a new micro-science that borrows techniques from chemistry, biology, and physics. Its proponents believe that its advancing frontiers are opening up exciting opportunities to solve some of the most worrisome human and environmental problems and revolutionize medicine, manufacturing, pollution control, national security, computer and other high-tech industries, space technology, and an almost endless array of other fields.
Mardigian quotes from "The Promise and Perils of the Nanotech Revolution," a science article in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Nanotechnology could revolutionize science, technology, medicine, and space exploration. [Or] Nanotechnology could ravage the environment, eliminate jobs, and lead to frightening new weapons of war.
She also excerpts a couple of paragraphs from our website:
Effective use of nanotechnology will require intelligent and prudent policy-making. The situation is urgent.
Molecular manufacturing and assembly will be simpler and easier in many ways than normal manufacturing. Rapid development programs, some of which may be secret, competitive, and unregulated, will be driven by powerful economic and military incentives. To be prepared for the coming development of molecular manufacturing technology, we must start planning for it immediately.
Her article concludes:
Nanotech has great potential to improve our lives by developing better, faster, stronger, smaller, and cheaper systems. But there is a clear imperative to identify and explore questions of both safety and ethics, and to determine the precautionary ground rules needed to ensure safety as advances in nanotechnology inexorably take us into a new era and radically transform our world.
We agree, and we're pleased to see others carrying this message forward.