Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

Jeremy Rifkin wrote, in his article Biotech Century: Playing Ecological Roulette with Mother Natures Design, "Humans have been remaking the Earth for as long as we have had a history." Well the path of history humans have chosen to take also affects how we remake the Earth. In Neal Stephensons novel, The Diamond Age, one is shown how the technology of the time reshapes the political, economical and educational aspects of history. That technology is the manipulation of molecules into atomic-sized machines called nano-machines. Stephenson brilliantly shows how such a powerful and truly revolutionary technology like nanotechnology could change life, as we now know it, or they in the future know life. Nanotechnology, as nanotechnology exists in The Diamond Age, is well developed and highly used. Matter compilers use nanotechnology to make most mass-produced consumer products, and most matter compilers are powered by resource suppliers called Feeds. Those who control the Feeds control nanotechnology and have a great amount of political and economical power. These same individuals or groups of individuals called phyles usually represent those who hold most the wealth and political sway in the world. That power and wealth then causes the wealthy citizen or phyle to take for granted what they have so well. Such things include the best education, the nicest material possessions, inheritance, and even responsibility. However, what if that same technology that made the privileged, the privileged, was given to the masses, rich or poor, with the tools and talents to implement such technology? In a sense, making that same power that the upper class took for granted a great equalizer for society to play around with. This is w...

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...would be excluded from nanotechnologys reach.

Political power could be created and destroyed in a day; education would no longer be a problem in a sense of the uneducated being a problem; the world would no longer seem to get smaller because we could make the world bigger if need be- and if there was no more room to expand out, we could always expand up. The power of nanotechnology might seem like a blessing, but if nanotechnology were really as capable as Neal Stephenson made it, then I would be putting in for assignment relocation- probably to a more primitive planet

Works Cited

Rifkin, Jeremy. Biotech Century: Playing Ecological Roulette with Mother Natures Design, The Presence of Others. 3rd Edition. Eds.

Lunsford, Andrea. Ruszkiewicz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. 2000. (244-254)

Stephenson, Neal. The Diamond Age. New York: Bantam Books. 1995.