The immediate front for nanotech will be (already is) nano-materials, enabling qualities of interest to be created in materials or increased in material much the way a spider's web exceeds the qualities of steel cable for strength/mass. Fabrics, building materials, conductiors and the construction of informational circuits are examples for starters. Beyond that, nano-scale electro-mechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS) will enable some remarkable advances such as self-assembly, biotech devices small enough to inject into tissues or cells, and so on.

These are expected, but what is aalso likely to happen is another whole realm of quantim mapping and quantum computing enabling devices of thousands of times the computing power now available to be built into small structures, because the bits of binary logic are replaced with 32-base choices per bit instead of two.

If these areas open up, another possible surprise will be the maturation of string theory or its replacement facilitating transitions across huge spaces without the energy costs associated with moving mass through spacetime under present systems. Compare the difference between freight hauling today with the same functions in a time when all extra power came from organic sources (oxen, camels, and horses and elephants). No-one dreamed of a carbon-based internal combustion engine and a whole economy based on it. Such a world, in 1750, was essentially so far ahead of the current state of affairs as to be almost unthinkable. But within 200 years, it changed to becoming the default standard in all transport and heavy moving.

Mastering quantum analysis and spacetime modulation will have similar unpredictable benefits that would seem like science fiction to us.


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