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If you haven't been keeping up with advances in nanotechnology, then this article is eye-opening:

An Overview of CRN's Current Findings

From the article:

Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) manufacturing means the ability to build devices, machines, and eventually whole products with every atom in its specified place. MNT is coming soon—almost certainly within 20 years, and perhaps in less than a decade. When it arrives, it will come quickly. Molecular manufacturing can be built into a self-contained, tabletop factory that makes cheap products efficiently at molecular scale. The time from the first assembler to a flood of powerful and complex products may be less than a year. The potential benefits of such a technology are immense. Unfortunately, the risks are also immense.

What are the risks? The article states:

The power of the technology may cause two competing nations to enter a disruptive and unstable arms race. Weapons and surveillance devices could be made small, cheap, powerful, and very numerous. Cheap manufacturing and duplication of designs could lead to economic upheaval. Overuse of inexpensive products could cause widespread environmental damage. Attempts to control these and other risks may lead to abusive restrictions, or create demand for a black market that would be very risky and almost impossible to stop; small nanofactories will be very easy to smuggle, and fully dangerous. There are numerous severe risks—including several different kinds of risk—that cannot all be prevented with the same approach. Simple, one-track solutions cannot work. The right answer is unlikely to evolve without careful planning.

It is very interesting reading, and also very interesting to ponder the social/economic ramifications. As mentioned in Robotic Nation, the effects of technologies that will fall into our hands over the next 20 to 30 years will be unbelievable from a social and economic standpoint. These technologies have the power to create "heaven on earth", or "hell on earth", depending on how we manage their arrival and dispersion.