Nano-imaging techniques will also play a vital role in making the analysis of neuro-molecular level events possible. When data from advanced biochips and brain imaging are combined they will accelerate the development of neurotechnology, the set of tools that can influence the human central nervous system, especially the brain. Neurotechnology will be used for therapeutic ends and to enhance human emotional, cognitive and sensory system performance. Going Nano: The Sixth Wave If we have to believe the nanoscientists, soon we will live in a disease free environment while eating skin-less extra nutritious fruits and vegetables. Walking on bridges that wont fall down in earthquakes and flying in airplanes which are so strong and so light that if the engines failed would just glide. Nanotech will create molecular machines that repair our bodies and ultra fast molecular computers that can be painted on the wall while storing and manipulating information in new ways. Nanotech will be impacting everything; information technology, energy, medicine. Nothing will be left “untouched”. On the other hand; If we have to believe the nano skeptics we’ll soon dine in hell. But what do we really know about nanotech? We surely know that nanotech is not a new science. Chemists have already been doing it for thousands of years. Mayan blue pigment in pottery is proved to contain nanoparticles as well as Phoenician glass. Nanoparticles where also known -unconsciouslyto medieval artisans who mixed gold and copper nanoparticles into molten glass to create composite materials that absorbed and reflected light in a way that it produced rich glowing colors, like ruby for instance. From the medieval times we jump to the twentieth century. In 1959 physicist Richard Feynman predicted a future where machines would be built atom by atom. By 1985 new molecular blocks where discovered namely the Bucky Ball, a previously unknown form of carbon and it appeared to be an incredible strong football shaped molecule. Harold Kroto, the founder of this particular molecule, researched the chemistry in stars and while doing experiments discovered the Bucky Ball. It happened totally unexpected but the discovery radically changed our understanding of sheet materials and in particular graphite.
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Kroto also discovered that the spheric structure of the Bucky Ball could be elongated and he gave it the name Nanotube. These Nanotubes would -and will be used in time- to build new super structures with amazing capabilities. But unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Scientists still face massive problems. One of the fundamental problems right now is how to govern the growth of molecules which are self assembling. For those who are arachnophobic; Nobel Prize winner Sir Harold Kroto imagines a nanospider capable of weaving these structures together in a uniform way. Growth and growth management -read control- is the current generator of paradigm shifts in science. For instance; engineers have to think like biologist and anticipate on the idea that structures can grow. This helps them to understand the underlying dynamics of a structure. This is a novel way of working within science and the academic world. Science -and in particular nanotechbecomes a truly multidisciplinary and a blanket subject area that combines biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and technology among other things. Small scale (micro) science (atomic and molecular) is called nanoscience. To give you an idea about the scale we are talking about; a single nanometer is one billionth of a meter wide and 1/100,000th of the width of a single human hair and that’s about a string of five atoms! Amazingly small. Hard to imagine isn’t it? At IBM in Zurich they build a device that can tactile sense atoms and move them across a surface using quantum mechanical tunneling techniques. Basically you can move them in a perfect pattern. Yes, even write your name on a quantum level! Nanohedron, a online gallery, aims to exhibit scientific images, with a focus on images depicting nanoscale objects (http://www.nanohedron.com). Is it art? I don’t know, but is definitely worthwhile to visit. What is key in nanoart is that it’s not only using technology, but that it’s inseparable from it in the process phase. The space in which the artworks are created is ‘’infinitely small” and thus generates new ways of thinking, methodologies, offers different ways of artistic expression and poses innumerable questions. Working with Nanotech as an artist is a statement because by definition, the infinite cannot be revealed nor consumed.
Yes, it’s provocative, it’s subtle and intelligent because it removes the direct view of the image and paradoxally offers a “non-vision.” Nanoart can be an antidote to the massive invasion of external images and bring forth a degeneration of the object and sight. Whatever the outcome is, whether you like the aesthetics or not, it’s an optical clear statement. Nanotech is very similar to information. It is selfreplicating, or could be. Sci-fi writers would like us to imagine a world where nano-bullets are fired at the moon that converts it (the entire moon) into an evolving and living nano/ecosystem in a matter of weeks. Changes in society are sensed much earlier by artists and writers than by us normans. They use their craft to amplify what they sense and by doing so make us aware of these changes. K.-Eric Drexler, a nanotech pioneer, in Engines of Creation (1990), conceives a future where all matter is reconfigurable. He brings together the dexterity of the computer and notions surrounding the programmability of atoms to create his vision of nanotechnology. Drexler -and his followers- believe in the possibility of manipulating matter atom by atom, building materials and structure from the bottom up by joining atoms together. In the Engines of Creation we feature Drexler’s account of how a rocket engine might be grown in a vat. If this technology were developed successfully, it would turn the whole world on its head; steak could be grown in meat machines not bigger than a microwave. Or how a swarm of self-organizing, self-replicating nanobots turn a planet into “Gray Goo.” Writers of science fiction love the idea of out-ofcontrol nanomachines. Machines that self-replicate and devour anything in their path. It’s cool, it’s sensational, it’s dramaturgical interesting. I can imagine it’s more fun to write about the Decepticons than the Autobots Transformers. After all, writers -and artists in general- need a story with some gravity, right?! But the bottom-line is that the author of this book is aware about the environmental effects of nanotech and poses questions about implications and impact of nanotech upon society. That is the crux or essence of this story. The artist -in this case a writeras an interpretator of his time, making predictions -here in the shape of a story- about the future. The artist as a messenger.