Alexander Anderson
New Century College
George Mason University

Potential Benefits

Fitting more information into smaller places provides additional space, better heating, and creates new applications. Some of the broad applications of Nanotechnology include, using Nanotube wires to improve electrical efficiency, reduce cost, and rate usage in addition to decreasing computer hard drives toward smaller phone hard drives. Nanotechnology also has potentially endless applications in the Nanomedicine field. As technology becomes smaller it opens many new avenues of medical treatment and prevention. Here is a list of Nanomedical applications many of which are listed by the Handbook of Nanomedicine and by Binns in 2010, with added descriptions and examples see footnote . The list contains items such as “Nano-Endoscopy, Nanotech-based drugs, Regenerative Medicine, Tissue Engineering, Nanorobotic Vascular Surgery, Nanoimaging, Artificial Organs, Nanodiagnostics, and Nanocoated Stents” (Jain, 2008)10. These applications include the most promising aspect towards Human Augmentation2; improving human biology beyond our natural human capabilities, (essentially, we upgrade/augment ourselves). Another important idea relating to this type of advancement is Transhumanism; that is best defined by the Oxford Dictionary . With Nanomedicine, Transhumanism is achievable, if not desirable. Some critics cite LASIK Eye Surgery as being a Transhumanist application because it provides subhuman eyesight (i.e. better than 20/20).