Basics: Control of Bodies

Basics: Control of Bodies

Date: 
24.05.1997 14:00
Edition: 
1997
Format: 
Panel
Location: 
Podewil

The approach of molecular nanotechnology research is to aim at the production of machines which operate within the nanometric range, i.e., with matter which is not larger than one millionth of a millimeter. "Nanotechnology", its mentor Eric. K. Drexler writes, “will one day find its way to the molecular level and work with electronic aids. With computers and robot-arms that are smaller than a living cell, it will be possible to build almost all structures imaginable, atom by atom". This vision is not undisputed. It is, indeed, possible today, under certain circumstances, to move individual atoms and to produce materials on an industrial scale whose size of grain is merely several hundred atoms large. Nevertheless, molecular control of all things is still far off. The odds of it being achieved are difficult to predict, as a variety of technical developments are complicatedly interrelated and rapid advancements might ensue. There is a tendency toward the miniaturisation of technology and toward further accelerations. In the technology of microsystems, progress will definitely be made. However, nanotechnology, in the true sense of the word - i.e., the artificial activation of genuine biological processes of self-organisation, so that objects are able to compose themselves, as it were, on their own - is, at most, still in the experimental stage. The realisation of such a technology would result in a cultural transformation which might in fact demand a "re-evaluation" of all values. If objects are produced for each of us at will, in a kind of "personal object-maker", categories - such as work, property, raw material, energy supply, growth - will have to be re­ assessed. A new relationship between the control and non-control of bodies and a new density of artificiality will follow: matter, in its smallest com­ ponents, will become a field of manipulation, which might also diminish the distance in the relation­ ship of an "idea" to "matter". What one envisions nanotechnolocially with objects could, under the right circumstances, become "reality" in an instant. Wolfgang Neuhaus

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