Nano Future 2030

After reading a story   about what we might change in our body to live longer, it occured to me that maybe we don’t have to fix the body as a whole but maybe just the cells.  It’s a matter of how you look at it. 

Say the task was to create a device that would go into your body and enter a cell, any cell, and clean it up, protect it and make it work better and forever?  Sure you could add bells and whistles but at first just fix the thing you already have.   Make a better cell.  And stay there as part of the cell.  You have just augmented that cell to do its job better.

Course there must be thousands of different types of cells.  Start with one, get that working then expand the skills of this device to handle another type of cell.  The technology would evolve until the device could handle any type cell.

In the future,  our bodies slowly change from pure biolology with many defects to  biology with technology support then to cells that are hard to say if they are biological or mechanical. They still do the same useful things as the original but they do so much more. 

Nothing new here, but a way of thinking/talking about it.  Reminds me of that suggestion to slowly replace the brain one neuron at a time to achieve immortality.  This is the same thing but now it applies to the whole body.

Slowly your body changes over to an intellently designed system rather than an evolved system.  Body cells work together the same as they do now, but they can be controlled by the intelligent immune system to work together in ways that are impossible with biological cells. Faster reactions,  logical reactions rather than knee-jerk reactions,  data communication. 

Our bodies look like they always have. Fundamentally, we are still human, but we gain the ability to modify our bodies as needed. And they don’t wear out.

In approximately 2020, true nanotechnology will become possible.  That is, we will be able to build technical devices at any scale or complexity at the molecular level.  That bodes both good and bad.

There are people in the world who want to control or destroy anyone who does not agree with them.  I’m primarily thinking of the religious fanatics but organized crime and the occasional crack pot also have little concern for society. This situation is a problem, because these people use any resource they can find.  They will find nanotechnology.   We intend to stay ahead of them and that seems feasible because these people are more interested in violence and struggle than in studying science.  But they are good scavengers.  And young people can be motivated to learn science to use against the enemy of their "group". So they will take what they can to use against the general population of the world.  Society at large is the thing that sets the stage for our lives. Any attack on that society should be resisted.

I see the world at all levels being forced to develop immune systems against the forces that try to tear us down.  At the personal level, we need under-the-skin medical technology to monitor and to repair our bodies when they are harmed by disease or by human attack.  At first it will deal with disease, but depending on how dangerous the world becomes,  individuals will equip themselves with the technology to defend their body against gas, bio-terrorism and direct attack.

Countries will try to protect their boarders. And will have about as much success as the Americans have had lately. The area is too big to control.  Cities and towns will monitor for bio-terrorism material drifting in the water and air.  Laser radars will monitor flying things down to the size of a fly.  But you can’t kill the ecosystem to clear the firing lines, so fuel cell powered robotic disease carriers,  the size of a bubble bee, can penetrate a city and drop their loads.  A house will need its own immune system to control what enters.   And finally the person, as a last ditch effort, will equip themselves with medical tools to repair damage or to defeat a bio-weapon.

Our biological immune system is in constant warfare with its environment.  If our immune system ceases to work, our body becomes the equivalent of a 150 pound ham sandwich sitting out on the table – in a few hours it is not even fit to eat much less perform all the complex tasks required to keep you breathing.  We are food.  And we stay healthy because we have a killer defense system in side our skin with a "take no prisoners" attitude against every thing that is trying to turn us into chopped liver. 

To survive in the world of 2020 and 2030, every entity – country, city, building, person – will need to have a similar immune system. 

I’ve commented before on how nano will save the natural world.  Maybe you don’t realize how pervasive nano will become.  It will affect everything, in the same way that electronics has become a part of our lives.  For instance, nano can disassemble things as well as it can assemble them. 

How does this affect our lives?  Household waste is a thing of the past.  You have two appliances, a nanofactory and a nano waste can – one produces food and supplies, the other absorbs waste and converts it to raw materials.  The waste can and the food machine form two sides of a coin.  One is in the kitchen, the other in a utility closet. 

Everything you use comes out of the nanofactory and every cast off, used clothes, worn out shoes are tossed into the nano waste can.  The important result is that you are able to live without consuming raw materials from Nature. 

The sea will recover. Rivers will run clean.   The waste products of this human race will no longer pollute the Earth.

So anything you can do to advance the development of true Molecular Manufacturing will save lives, save the environment and generally save the human race.