The next decade or two should see the advent of various new materials, semiconductor and bioinformatic-prosthetic advances that will use matter (substrates, atoms, and electrons) in wholly novel combinations, that will make matter and energy behave in ways never before seen.
Along with these kinds of advances in our understanding and ability to manipulate and constrain this behaviour, with various contraptions and devices, we are advancing our ability to exploit the world, and our ability to compete with other species, and to "maintain" a level of dominant status, in both regards, that also looks set to introduce changes to the world we live in.
We have, of course, always been between the rewards our inquisitiveness, and "handyman" ability: to pick up things and use them, turn them into more than bits of tree and rock bring us, and our ability to change the world, to consume resources, and have to move on to other sources. Now the world is changing because we have changed it; our success as a species is also our greatest threat to that very success, it seems.
Anyways, there are definitely going to be advances in the way micro- and nano-devices are going to be put together, and quantum, superconducting and other "anomalous" kinds of behaviours that appear to be able to tunnel through thermodynamical walls or barriers, will feature, once the cryogenic requirements have been addressed.
Here's a sample or two:
Vol. 316. no. 5825, pp. 723 - 726
DOI: 10.1126/science.1141324
They're onto this quantum information stuff, it can be "used" and transported around.
These nanowires could form a communication channel type structure in a substrate, or between different parts of a chip.
New kinds of detectors, or ways to interact with light, electric charge and magnetism.
Correlated randomness, a new kind of statistical phenomenon. With potential signaling uses.
Along with these kinds of advances in our understanding and ability to manipulate and constrain this behaviour, with various contraptions and devices, we are advancing our ability to exploit the world, and our ability to compete with other species, and to "maintain" a level of dominant status, in both regards, that also looks set to introduce changes to the world we live in.
We have, of course, always been between the rewards our inquisitiveness, and "handyman" ability: to pick up things and use them, turn them into more than bits of tree and rock bring us, and our ability to change the world, to consume resources, and have to move on to other sources. Now the world is changing because we have changed it; our success as a species is also our greatest threat to that very success, it seems.
Anyways, there are definitely going to be advances in the way micro- and nano-devices are going to be put together, and quantum, superconducting and other "anomalous" kinds of behaviours that appear to be able to tunnel through thermodynamical walls or barriers, will feature, once the cryogenic requirements have been addressed.
Here's a sample or two:
--Science 4 May 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5825, pp. 723 - 726
DOI: 10.1126/science.1141324
They're onto this quantum information stuff, it can be "used" and transported around.
--Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society
These nanowires could form a communication channel type structure in a substrate, or between different parts of a chip.
--Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society
New kinds of detectors, or ways to interact with light, electric charge and magnetism.
--Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society
Correlated randomness, a new kind of statistical phenomenon. With potential signaling uses.
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