abstract
| - The Nanotech Age is a hypothetical age in the future covered in most forms of fiction. According to Raymond Kurzweil, the Nanotech Age is expected to begin in the range from 2025 to 2050. Using the logic that is typical of early 21st century people, the situation would reveal itself as the wealthiest people living in the wealthiest countries in the world receiving nanotechnology services before everyone else. Those fostering the Millennium Development Goals wish to use nanotechnology to bring forth increasing levels of development in third world countries. However, it may widely separate each of the developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere apart from each other in economic and technological development. As the developing countries join the developed countries in the Nanotech Age by leapfrogging past technologies that heavily pollute the environment, Jamais Cascio sees a possible need for a Developmental Nanotech Initiative to ensure that the benefits of nanotechnology are spread as widely as possible. Emphasis on getting nanotechnology to people who need it may be the priority of the initiative instead of trying to gain a profit margin. Prices of nanotech goods sold on the retail and wholesale markets may witness a marginal decrease as seen in the recent prices of most electronic equipment. Eventually, all goods may become almost free to purchase. This theory is called the cost-performance ratio and may play a role in the upcoming Nanotech Age and the Singularity. Pollution may also be cleaned thanks to nanotechnology scrubbing away more than 200 years of toxins, chemicals, and other pollutants from our land, sea, water, and ozone layer. These elements were caused by industrialization and could be removed completely and permanently through the judicious use of nanobots designed to filter pollution from the pure air, pure water, or pure land. Once the pollution is neutralized, all threats of global warming and climate change may be eradicated permanently because Kurzweil never mentions them in his book The Singularity is Near. While conventional wisdom currently disagrees with nanotechnology completely eradicating pollution, those who follow Ray Kuzweil believe that anything can be solved using nanorobotics. Other places that nanotechnology can eradicate water pollution from include industrial hubs like Windsor (Ontario), Detroit (Michigan), and Nanticoke (Haldimand County, Ontario).
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