Word: atomization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that their silicon components will approach the size of molecules. At these incredibly tiny distances, the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics take over, permitting electrons to jump from one place to another without passing through the space between. Like water from a leaky fire hose, electrons will spurt across atom-size wires and insulators, causing fatal short circuits...
...salient neural details of the human brain, the most practical approach would be to scan it from inside. By 2030, "nanobot" technology should be available for brain scanning. Nanobots are robots that are the size of human blood cells or even smaller (see "Will Tiny Robots Build Diamonds One Atom at a Time?"). Billions of them could travel through every brain capillary and scan neural details up close. Using high-speed wireless connections, the nanobots would communicate with one another and with other computers that are compiling the brain-scan database...
...advent of programmable, nanoscale machines (see "Will Tiny Robots Build Diamonds One Atom at a Time?" in this issue) will extend the Internet to things the size of molecules that can be injected under the skin, leading to Internet-enabled people. Such devices, together with Internet-enabled sensors embedded in clothing, will avoid a hospital stay for medical patients who would otherwise be there only for observation. The speech processor used today in cochlear implants for the hearing impaired could easily be connected to the Internet; listening to Internet radio could soon be a direct computer-to-brain experience...
Nanotechnology is the science of creating molecular-size machines that manipulate matter one atom at a time. The name comes from nanometer--one one-billionth of a meter--which is roughly the size of these tiny devices...
...idea dates back to a 1959 speech by physicist Richard Feynman in which he proposed manipulating matter atom by atom and was championed most famously in K. Eric Drexler's 1986 book Engines of Creation...