Nanotechnology: The Digital Revolution

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According to historian Louis Gerteis, a revolution produces a “fundamental change, in “forms of economic and social organization”. Currently, within Science and Technology, no social revolution has taken place. I think part of the problem today is stemmed from the elastic meaning of the word “revolution.” The term is often thrown around with careless abandon. The concept has almost become trivialized. In our own time we have lived through the technological revolution, the cybernetic revolution, the sexual revolution, the black revolution, the green revolution, the feminist revolution, the youth revolution, the paperback revolution, and the revolution of rising expectations, to name a few. By such standards Science and Technology is not a …show more content…

For example, owners of sports teams have had to find new ways to attract fans to their stadiums - fans who can just as easily watch the game in high definition from the comfort of their own home. This is just one example of the many ways that the digital revolution is making some of our lives easier and better, while at the same time presenting new challenges for others. One of the reasons the digital revolution has progressed so far so fast is the new and evolving field of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology refers to the creation of artificial structures at the smallest sizes possible - at times even down to the atomic or molecular levels! Like the digital revolution, nanotechnology is beginning to touch every aspect of our lives. Indeed, the two trends are working in concert: advances in nanotechnology are allowing digital code to be written on smaller and smaller surfaces, causing computing power and storage space to grow exponentially in recent …show more content…

Smartphones, tablets, Wi-Fi, 4G, social media, all of these have become integral, essential elements of our daily lives. Some behavioral scientists even believe that they are fundamentally changing how we communicate. Since we use devices to communicate, some worry that we are losing social skills. Other researchers observe with fascination the new languages of social media (jk, lol), full of their own symbols. Yet other researchers have predicted that the new generation is so connected through social media to a global culture of shared ideas that eventually all borders will become meaningless. Only time will

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