Page 135 - Nanotechnology an introduction

inference engine. This is an example of indirect nanotechnology: the practical feasibility depends on the availability of extremely powerful
processors, based on chips having a very high degree of integration enabled by nanoscale components on the chips.
The second aspect is drug design. In many cases useful targets (enzymes, ion channels, promoter sites on DNA) for therapeutic action are already
known through molecular biology work. The key tasks for the designer in current practice are: (i) to generate a collection of molecules that bind to
the target; and (ii) to select those that bind negligibly to structurally related but functionally unrelated or antagonistic targets. Task (i) may nowadays
be largely accomplished automatically through molecular modeling (trial and error docking), and thus requires high-performance (possibly nano-
enabled) computing. Task (ii) is a germane problem, the solution of which is mainly hampered through ignorance of the rival targets. However, the
growing importance of scrutinizing biological processes not only from the viewpoint of what is now traditional molecular biology but also from that of
the nano-engineer is yielding new insight (a particularly valuable example of such new insight is the characterization of the propensity of
biomolecules to bind according to their dehydron density [54]).
Since diet is an important contribution to health, nanotechnology applied to foodstuffs could also be considered to be part of nanomedicine. This is
of course a vast area, ranging from nanoscale sensors for discreetly probing food quality to nanoscale food additives (to create “nutriceuticals”) to
nanoscale field additives such as fertilizers, pesticides, and enhancers of agriculturally advantageous natural symbioses. Since water is ingested
by humans in greater quantity than any other substance, it might also be considered as food, making nanotechnologies applied to water purification
also part of nanomedicine. Furthermore, creating micronutrients in nanoparticulate form permits substances that are normally considered too
insoluble to be of nutritional value to be administered (cf. equation 2.7).

12.4. Commercial and Economic Impacts
Although if the many nanotechnology market reports are to be believed, the technology sector is growing robustly, this growth will be unsustainable
unless issues of standardization and risk are addressed. At present, the nanoscale products (e.g., nanoparticles and nanofibers) supplied by many
companies are essentially research grades sold on the basis of caveat emptor. Standardization implies robust nanometrology (cf. Chapter 5) in
order to be able to verify compliance with specifications; the existence of the specifications in turn implies the possibility of freely tradeable
commodities via an exchange. Once this begins to happen on a significant scale, the nanotechnology industry will have reached a certain stage of
maturity and will be able to continue to develop more and more sophisticated commodities, such as sensorial materials.
The economic impacts of the technological innovations considered in the previous section are likely to be relatively minor as far as the “soft”
implementations of nanotechnology are concerned. There will be many innovations but these will in turn breed new demands and one cannot
therefore expect a dramatic change in work–life balance. At least, this has been the experience of the developed world for the last century or so
and there is no reason to expect radical change from what are essentially incremental improvements. For example, many of the new nanostructured
drug delivery vehicles will lead to therapeutic enhancement, but once the old ailments are cured, new ones are likely to be found requiring further
new drugs. In contrast, the “hard” implementation—the personal nanofactory—will lead to very dramatic changes in terms of personal
empowerment. The entire system of the joint stock company concentrating resources into large, central, capital-intensive factories will become
obsolete.

It is often stated that the driver behind Moore's law is purely economic. This is not, however, self-evident. It presumably means that growth is
dominated by “market pull” rather than “technology push”, but this raises a number of questions. It is doubtful whether there are intrinsic markets,
and even if there were why should the technology advance exponentially? How could the actual doubling time be predicted? Does it depend on the
number of people working on the technology? If they are mostly employed by large corporations (such as semiconductor chip manufacturers) the
ability of those corporations to pay the salaries of the technologists indeed depends on economic factors, but this would not hold in the case of
open source development, whether of software or hardware. Similar questions apply to all technical innovations, which generally grow exponentially.
Technology push seems to require fewer assumptions as an explanation than market pull. However, it may be erroneous to say that the dynamics
must reflect either technology push or market pull. Both may be in operation; in analogy to the venerable principle of supply and demand, push and
pull may also “equilibrate”, as illustrated in Figure 12.1.

Figure 12.1 Proposed quasi-equilibrium between technology push (solid line) and market pull (dashed line). The ideal level of output occurs where they exactly match each other. This diagram neglects consideration of possible temporal
mismatch between push and pull.
Further aspects connected with “push” and “pull” are the degree to which technology changes society, and the degree to which society is ready for
change. The internet—first e-mail and now social networking sites—has enormously changed the way people communicate with one another as
individuals. It cannot be said that there was a market for these innovations, or for mobile telephony; the market was somehow created. The latter in
particular epitomizes many aspects of a sustainable commercial activity; most users are eager to keep up with the latest technological innovations
that imply a high degree of personal enthusiasm among the technology developers. Although these technologies are already nano-enabled (through
their ultraminiature information processors) the economic model behind them is basically that of the Industrial Revolution. The new communications
media are heavily infiltrated by commercial advertising. Internet search engines and social networking sites are not actually floating somewhere in
cyberspace but are firmly anchored to strong financial interests and user preferences can easily be linked to advertising via the cellular phone. All
this activity has taken on a strong cultural dimension, since for it to be widely acceptable culture has somehow had to become dominated by its
commercial and popular side, virtually squeezing out anything else. Although this general trend appears to be fully in the spirit of Adam Smith's
“invisible hand”—every member of society acting in his or her best interest and thereby contributing to the general good—there seems to be a