Imagine that, in the near future, you need lung surgery. Currently, this type of surgery would be very invasive and very risky to do surgery. But, due to advances in nanotechnology, the surgery could be quick and painless with almost no inherent risk and would not be nearly as invasive. Nanotechnology isn’t exactly new; it has been discussed and studied for many years. However, advances in this field have led to new and exciting discoveries. Surgeries, for example, are one of the things to which nanotechnology has provided a promising future. This promise, however, has a dark side. While there have been quite a few innovations that have launched this technology to the forefront of many scientists’ minds, countless skeptics and nonbelievers
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With so many human births and increased energy usage, there are questions as to whether we will deplete our supply of energy in the coming years. Sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas are currently being used. As production peaks for these sources of energy, there is worry as to how long they will last. Many scientists and researchers are looking into ways to provide energy to people in a less expensive way that is safer for the environment. Current methods provide energy to households would be too space consuming and very expensive. For example, to produce a unit using a lead-acid storage battery to store one hundred kilowatt hours of electrical energy would take up a space approximately the size of a small room and would cost upwards of ten-thousand dollars. This is precisely where nanotechnology helps. With great advances in this area, it could be possible to downsize the aforementioned unit to the size of a washing machine and drop the cost to less than one thousand dollars. Looking at all of the current and proposed solutions for humanity’s energy crisis, nanotechnology is the quite …show more content…
Privacy has been a big concern of citizens interested in nanotechnology. The biggest component of the privacy breach is radio frequency identification chips called RFID. This technology is essentially the remote recognition of objects. With RFID, there has been concern that our privacy could potentially be breached by stores and companies by means of item-level tagging. Essentially, item-level tagging is a better way to keep inventory. If a company were to integrate the RFID into a product through nanotechnology, it would be easy to keep stock and be able see if an item was stolen. However, when an item is purchased, the RFID does not simply disappear. Therefore, the RFID chip is able to transmit information based on the consumer’s purchases and private information when they buy a product. Even more worrisome than item-level tagging, is human implants. Human implantation has been possible since 2001. This is when a company called Applied Digital Solutions introduced a product called VeriChip. It had a sixteen-digit identification number that could be recognized by RFID readers. This is not, however, a commonly-used product. It is alarming, however, because of the dangers it proposes. If a person has one of these chips and someone else has a RFID reader, the reader could be used to garner very private information from the unsuspecting
With so many human births and increased energy usage, there are questions as to whether we will deplete our supply of energy in the coming years. Sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas are currently being used. As production peaks for these sources of energy, there is worry as to how long they will last. Many scientists and researchers are looking into ways to provide energy to people in a less expensive way that is safer for the environment. Current methods provide energy to households would be too space consuming and very expensive. For example, to produce a unit using a lead-acid storage battery to store one hundred kilowatt hours of electrical energy would take up a space approximately the size of a small room and would cost upwards of ten-thousand dollars. This is precisely where nanotechnology helps. With great advances in this area, it could be possible to downsize the aforementioned unit to the size of a washing machine and drop the cost to less than one thousand dollars. Looking at all of the current and proposed solutions for humanity’s energy crisis, nanotechnology is the quite …show more content…
Privacy has been a big concern of citizens interested in nanotechnology. The biggest component of the privacy breach is radio frequency identification chips called RFID. This technology is essentially the remote recognition of objects. With RFID, there has been concern that our privacy could potentially be breached by stores and companies by means of item-level tagging. Essentially, item-level tagging is a better way to keep inventory. If a company were to integrate the RFID into a product through nanotechnology, it would be easy to keep stock and be able see if an item was stolen. However, when an item is purchased, the RFID does not simply disappear. Therefore, the RFID chip is able to transmit information based on the consumer’s purchases and private information when they buy a product. Even more worrisome than item-level tagging, is human implants. Human implantation has been possible since 2001. This is when a company called Applied Digital Solutions introduced a product called VeriChip. It had a sixteen-digit identification number that could be recognized by RFID readers. This is not, however, a commonly-used product. It is alarming, however, because of the dangers it proposes. If a person has one of these chips and someone else has a RFID reader, the reader could be used to garner very private information from the unsuspecting