Nano-Materials

"Times are changing Aaron, you can't just be a scientist anymore."

A metal door with two oval windows split neatly in half and slid smoothly into the white-washed walls. Two white lab coats fluttered into the room. One belonged to a young lady full of eagerness with her glasses standing on tiptoes at the edge of her nose. She was equipped with a pen and clipboard and brandishing both with vigor. The other lab coat belonged to a middle-aged man wielding confidence in one hand and a large black umbrella in the other.

The lady's name is Aaron. She had just recently been hired by NexGen and eagerly spending her first day taking a tour alongside the manager of the Materials Science department. The man was none other than Professor Kurz Lineheart, world renowned pioneer into Nano science as well as a close friend and college to Don Netter.

"Even this old man realizes that times are changing. Tell me Aaron what is a Nano-Material?"

The doors slid smoothly back together as the pair continued down the hallway.

"Well Professor, they are materials engineered at a molecular level..."

"Stop there Aaron. You see, you are being a scientist. Average people these days may be able to understand the concept of molecular level, but imagine I chose a person off the street. How would you describe a Nano material in terms of familiar object?"

"Um...?"

"Not so easy is it? Well imagine a pencil. When a pencil makes a mark on a sheet of patter it leaves a very thin slice of graphite. Now if we took the thin slice of graphite and rolled it up into a column it would be basically a carbon nano-tube."

Aaron scratched her head. "Never thought about it like that Professor."

"Most scientists don't. But do you see? I have put the idea of engineering a structure of carbon atoms into a story that uses neither the word 'engineer' or 'atom'. And this is the way the world desires we present our information. We demand explanations of things we do not understand because we are afraid otherwise. And still sometimes we calculate equations and obtain results without truly comprehending what they mean."

"But Professor we can't fully explain every equation. That would take years."

"Of course not, but we can explain the general concepts in a way that anyone can understand. That way we can share our ideas with smart people outside our field. We are moving toward that too. And when we do who knows where the field of Nano will take us?"

"Toward small?"

"Ha ha, very good Aaron."

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Rise of the Nano-bot

It took many years but finally it has been created; a nano-chip. The NexGen laboratory hasn't changed much in structure. But people age while equipment strives toward eternal youth. Two lab-coats once again fluttered down the hallway.

One had grown into a woman and had gained many years of experience. She now wore a silver ring on her left hand and sometimes worried about her daughter who was growing up far too fast. She walked the hallways now with confidence and carried a black umbrella. The other belonged to a balding man who carried the burden of the world on his back. He now wielding a walking cane but clutched it like it was a life preserve.

The professor had taught Aaron many things and now she has surpassed the master. In recent years the blueprints for a machine that could construct a nano-chip have been sent to design, built, tested, and now starting to mass produce. Aaron was the head engineer and Professor Lineheart was the proud teacher watching. The things that have come to pass were just as the professor had predicted.

After many years of exploring the properties of nano-materials and arranging carbon molecules into cylinders and weaving them into a matrix, finally a transistor was created. The resistor was next and soon a nano-switch. Before long a whole entire nano-circuit board built upon ancient ideas of electric circuitry meeting new nano-materials. And they married happily together.

Soon after the connection cables small enough to input information on one end and large enough to fit to a keyboard and screen on the other was born. The rest is history. Computer programmers began writing code on a chip thousands of times smaller than a microchip. In turn processing power increased hundred fold. The size of everyday electronics however remained the same because if the screens were any smaller we would need to squint. But the i-phone? Well it was now a complete computer. You could play say World of Warcraft with almost no lag save small glitches in wireless communications. And even that was changing.

The best however was yet to come. An engineer, a biologist, and a computer programmer walk into the bar. They walk out and create a nano-robot. Well the joke is only funny when you realize that it’s not a joke but exactly how it happened. Cross-department project are not a new concept, but it is very rare to get a team who understands each other. The engineer loves drawing diagrams of circuits and parts. The biologist has drawn a cell a couple of times but now relies on experimentation for results. The programmer speaks in logic and sometimes in incomplete phrases and symbols.

They all speak the same language but they might as well be living in different worlds. But a night out with some social lubricant and suddenly the biologist remembers drawing diagrams and understands the engineer. The engineer remembers testing and retesting stress and load of a gear and understands the biologist. The programmer remembers how he used to draw a process diagram and understands both. And so on.

The rest of the story goes something like this. Nano-bots were created and made initially to fight diseases and aid in repair of the human body. The next step was of course enhancing all the abilities of a human from hearing to eyesight, to reflex, to athletic strength, flexibility, and beyond. We did indeed build the robots of a revolution but what we did not know was the robots would not be in humanoid biped form. No, the robots were inside of us and soon we would become one with the robots.

Soon the nano-bots would emerge outside of the human body, linking together to form a chain of nano-LED lights. If enough pixels are flashed together in a moment of time they form an image and if synchronized could create a moving image. The nano-bots would also learn to create carbohydrate, protein, and fat molecules. They would inevitably learn to reproduce and gain intelligence.

The story of the rise of the nano-bot? It goes that there is no war between man and machine. There is no war because the robots we build will be smarter than that. They will rely on the fact that we are dependent on them. And they are dependent on us for the moment to create them. That is the story of the rise of the nano-bot. It is a story of man becoming a machine and machine becoming part of man.

And we are left with two questions: wasn't man machine to begin with? And if not is he still human now?