Nano Technology: The Flipside of Transition Technology

Abstract

The 21st century world is indisputably at intersection of a revolutionary era, ushered in by synergized confluence of biotechnology and nano technology. Whereas characteristic building blocks that were, manifested in all traditional evolutionary changes in Industrial era from flint chips to silicon chips , were technologies, now in recent times , in a quick reversal of situation, bulk technologies are on cusp of radically getting replaced by entirely new generation of molecular technologies. This necessarily pre supposes a shift in way we look at manufacturing industry. Molecular manufacturing has in this process come to mean a revolutionary gene-on-a-chip approach which seeks to manufacturing industry as we know it. It would also eliminate rural sector: farms growing food and forest plantations growing (1). In Agricultural sector, it would make a sea change as when large slabs of beef or chicken meat grown in vats by in vitro process would be available without growing any cattle or poultry in farm level . It is estimated that a single animal could provide more than a billion pounds of in vitro meat to feed world's population for at least several hundred years (2). Similarly scientists would be in a position to synthesize, wood commensurate with desirable characteristics instead of having to rely on nature's imperfect random variations, all of which are likely to have far reaching implications in land use and sustainability. As a result, unlike as of now, in nano technology enabled future, the farm will be a wide area bio-factory that can be monitored and managed from a laptop and food will be crafted from designer substances delivering nutrients efficiently to body. (3), While nanotechnology is admittedly technology enabled and atomically assembled antithesis to organic agriculture, organic agriculture on other hand places a premium on wholesome health-boosting properties of fresh, unprocessed whole foods. In contrast nanotechnology, further seeks to transform farm as a whole into an automated extension of high technology factory production line. According to Raymond Ray Kurzweil who has since been hailed by Forbes as the ultimate thinking machine as it is computing power, that renders growth in so many fields of science and technology, these improvements in computing power, ipso facto , translate themselves into exponential advancements in non-computer sciences like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and materials science. Kurzweil has chosen to refer to this concept as Law of Accelerating Returns. The goal of Agriculture is to supply all people on planet with enough food to prevent wide spread hunger and starvation. However, larger issues of food security are getting worse day by day, resulting in an increase in number of malnourished persons in world. The ever increasing population in developing and less developed countries is also coming in way, as a major constraint in eradication of poverty. While there are beneficial attributes of Nano technology there are also pitfalls in its path. David Collingridge, of University of Aston, has given us a treatise of how two conditions necessary for avoiding