Across the world, universities and government institutions are making advances in nano-technology that could shatter today's concept of electronics. As far as speed and memory are concerned, the results may be incomprehensible to consumers and businesses alike.

Consumers are routinely fooled by the false-security of a megahertz rating. Most buyers think an extra 50Mhz is appealing, despite a $75-$100 increase on the price tag. True, a 550 Pentium 3 has a 10% speed advantage over a 500 Pentium 3, but it realistically only performs a 5% increase in most applications. Consumers need to understand that speed and performance are mutually exclusive. An extra 100 bucks is hardly worth the 10-12-millisecond improvement when launching Microsoft Word. Still, an 800 Athlon thi

Perhaps the big story -- with mature nanotechnology, any object can morph into any other imaginable object... truly a concept requiring personal exposure to fully understand the significance and possibilities, but to get a grip on the idea, consider this:

This is not to say individual purpose objects will not be desirable... Back to cotton -- although Cubes could mimic the exact appearance of a fuzzy down comforter (a blanket), if made out of cubes, it would be heavy and not have the same thermal properties. Although through a heroic engineering effort, such a "blanket" could be made to insulate and pipe gasses like a comforter and even "levitate" slightly to mimic the weight and mass, why bother when the real thing can be manufactured atom by atom, on site, at about a meter a second (depending on thermal considerations).

No one, for instance, has discovered a way to link all the nano-particles, which process data as 1's and 0's together. And it was only recently that UCLA was able to get the components to repeatedly work. Basically, it could only work with data once, and could not switch back and forth between the 1's and 0's. As with any other technology, the bumps in the road and problems to come will meet with new questions and innovative solutions.

The point is -- if you have enough of the cubes of small enough dimension, they can slide over each other, or "morph" into any object with just about any function, one can imagine and program for such behavior. Cubes of sufficiently miniaturized size could be programed to behave like the "T-2" Terminator Robot in the Arnold Schwartznegger movie, or a lawn chair... Just about any animate or inanimate object.

Imagine a world without cell phones, wireless phones, beepers, fax and answering machines, video tape players, cam corders, cable TV, CD audio, Sony Walkmans, Microwave ovens, Intendo, personal computers and the World Wide Web. Back then, few people had the luxury of a remote control for their tube! I tell ya... it was a dismal dark age of hand operated analog devices. We should fall to the ground in pity for our parents and grandparents and ourselves for the drudgery of just surviving grocery checkouts with no laser readers.

Never before has 30 years been such a long, long time, technologically. I am speaking of course, of the ever increasing curve of advancement in all fields of tech and science.

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Approximate Word count = 5049
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page double spaced)