Concluding Remarks: The Prospects and Dangers of the Nanobiological Revolution

There is no task more intellectually challenging than to forecast the future. No one back in the 1950s could even imagine the technological and cultural revolution that would be created by the introduction of personal computers and the Internet. The iPhone was released only in 2007 and nowadays it seems to be an integral part of the technological arena. Nevertheless, without being able to grasp the full scale of future events, it was already very clear by 1950 that the second half of the 20th century would be dominated by electronics and global telecommunication. When we now forecast the second decade of the 21st century and attempt to have some insight into the future it is very clear that the next 50 years will be dominated by a rapid and revolutionary advancement in both the fields of biology and nanotechnology. The fine details are yet to be revealed but the general framework can already be seen. Biology in the first decade of the 21st century is positioned approximately at the same place physics was situated several decades or even a century ago. The general concepts are known, due to an explosion in the amount of experimental information, and there is even significant theoretical understanding of the processes. Most importantly, there is an immense interest and excitement regarding the importance of these studies among the general public as well as among the world leaders and decision-makers…