A Key understanding of nanotechnology is that it offers not just better products, but a vastly improved means of production. A computer can make copies of data fields –essentially as many copies as you want at little or no cost. It may be only a matter of time until the manufacture of products becomes as cheap as the copying of files. That’s the real meaning of nanotechnology, and why it is sometimes seen as "the next industrial revolution". In practical terms, most people will encounter nanotech through an apparently simple device called a nanofactory that may sit on your countertop or desktop. Packed with miniature chemical processors, computing, and robotics, it will produce a wide-range of items quickly, cleanly, and inexpensively, all controlled by a touch screen. Nanotechnology not only will allow making many high-quality products at very low cost, but it will allow making new nanofactories at the same low cost and at the same rapid speed. This unique (outside of biology, that is) ability to reproduce its own means of production is why nanotech is said to be an exponential technology. It represents a manufacturing system that will be able to make more manufacturing systems -factories that can build factories -rapidly, cheaply, and cleanly. The means if production will be able to reproduce exponentially, so in just a few weeks a few nanofactories conceivably could become billions. It is a revolutionary, transformative, powerful, and potentially very dangerous –or beneficial -technology. This ‘Updated and Extended Dictionary of Nanotechnology’ will help students and technologists understand the terms related to the new revolutionary technology, which s gradually taking shape and is poised to write a new developmental script for mankind.
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