This part covers the metaphysical consequences of the new technological revolution. On the one hand scientist start to use metaphysical concepts to describe the impact of their research, on the other hand, a surprisingly large number of scientific projects is inspired by religious aspirations and more and more theologians from any religious or spiritual belief are getting interested in these aspirations of new technology, making the discussion inextricable complex.

Part 2: Preparing for the Singularity
In this part advocates and opponents of a transhuman future are weighed against each other; prognoses are done when we can expect the transhuman revolution and how people are preparing for it already now.

Inventor James Tour a professor of chemistry at Rice University won the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for developing a car that is just four nanometers across and slightly wider than a strand of DNA. Tour’s nanocar car has a pivoting suspension, rotating axles attached to wheels, and even an engine!

The nanocar is able to move by using light or heat. When the surface that the cars are on is heated it excites the molecules that make up the car and as a reaction the nanocar moves forward until ultimately it hit’s an object. The light method works on the principle of Photoactivation.

Tour hopes that within the next 30 years his technology could construct quantum-dot memory which string together metal atoms in patterns that could then store data.

“Until now, engineers have built things by taking larger objects and cutting them down to make smaller ones,” Tour said. “In the future, things will be built not from the top down, but the bottom up -- as in nature.”

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Roughly every 18 months transistors get smaller but at the same time also increase in processing power. It was Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in particular who predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors that can fit on a processor would roughly double every two years or so. Today this growth occurs every 18 months. But this exponential growth is not indefinite; there will be a time when the laws of quantum physics prevent any further shrinkage using conventional methods. And this is where atomic-scale computing comes into play with an essentially different solution to the problem.

“Nanotechnology is about taking something and shrinking it to its smallest possible scale. It’s a top-down approach,” says Christian Joachim of the (CNRS).

Using devices such as the scanning-tunnelling microscopes and atomic-force microscopes both devices which can measure and move individual atoms Joachim’s team has managed to design a simple logic gate with 30 atoms that perform the same task as 14 transistors. More?

Suppose you want to build a computer that operates like the brain of a mammal. How hard could it be? After all, there are supercomputers that can decode the human genome, play chess and calculate prime numbers out to 13 million digits...Continue

IBM has seen the future of computing and it may not involve silicon. Instead the company has been looking at graphene, the single atom-thick sheets of carbon that has materials scientists entranced by its dazzling array of amazing properties...Continue

Scientists are developing new ways to selectively boost gene expression in the brain, in the hope of treating psychiatric and neurological disease. A growing pool of evidence shows that compounds that target this mechanism can improve learning and memory in rodents. But existing drugs, which were not developed for this purpose, are relatively weak and unselective, and their long-term safety is not yet clear...Full

A group of scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has fabricated a working computer chip that is almost completely clear -- the first of its kind. The new technology, called transparent resistive random access memory (TRRAM), is described in this week's issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters....Continue

"Rather than infer that nanotechnology is safe, members of the public who learn about this novel science tend to become sharply polarized along cultural lines, according to a study conducted by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School in collaboration with the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. The report is published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology..."Continue

Visions of the Future: The Biotech Revolution. 2nd part of 3 part miniseries on the BBC hosted by Michio Kaku. In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the 'Age of Discovery' to the 'Age of Mastery', a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities. Genetics and biotechnology promise a future of unprecedented health and longevity: DNA screening could prevent many diseases, gene therapy could cure them and, thanks to lab-grown organs, the human body could be repaired as easily as a car, with spare parts readily available. Ultimately, the ageing process itself could be slowed down or even halted. But what impact will this have on who we are and how we will live? And, with our mastery of the genome, will the human race end up in a world divided by genetic apartheid?