If you’ve never heard the term “nanotechnology,” now’s the time to learn what it means.  In just a few short years, maybe less than thirty, progress in the emerging and widely diverse field known as nanotechnology will make this science one of the most significant in human history.  Nanotechnology will transform everything from medicine, communication, data storage, industry, warfare, commerce, and much more – in short, nanotechnology is revolutionary.

Nanotechnology means, quite literally, technology at the atomic scale.  The general idea is that matter is manipulated on such a small scale that new substances can be built up from the atomic level.  The devices that do the manipulating will themselves be machinery miniaturized down to molecular size (hence also the term used to refer to this science, Molecular Nanotechnology, or MNT).  Since quantum physics, chemistry, and molecular biology operate at the atomic level, nanotechnology developments will follow their laws.

It’s mind-boggling, to be sure, and it may seem more like science fiction than reality.  But atomic manipulation has been around a while (hint: the atomic bomb).  Suppose there are teeny-tiny (“teeny-tiny” being a euphemism for “nanometer,” a unit of measurement that is the size of about three atoms, or 40,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair!) computers and machines that can perform tasks and store data on a scale now impossible by means of regular computers and other machinery.

Imagine, for a moment, the idea of tiny machines injected into the human blood stream for the sole purpose of searching out and destroying early cancer cells.  Contemplate the idea of storing the entire Library of Congress on a computer the size of a few dimes stacked on top of one another.  Consider even the possibility of creating machines from proteins.  Will there be a day when we create a real life “Terminator” or “Six Million Dollar Man” out of nanotechnology applications?  Could machines, at an atomic level, do what those in “The Matrix” trilogy did?

Clearly, the implications and potential range of applications of nanotechnology are seemingly endless, both the potentially beneficial and harmful.  In either case, nanotechnology is not a pipe dream, and it’s not confined to a small sector of possible uses.  Nanotechnology is being researched across disciplines in the engineering and natural sciences, so it should prove to be one of the most widespread and dramatic technological advances in human history.

So, just what are the implications of nanotechnology for society and individuals?  Who will own it?  Who will have access to it?  Will it further widen the gap between developing countries and established industrial nations?  How will it affect the gap between rich and poor?  How will it affect the economy and the environment?  Does human enhancement by, and interaction with, nanotechnology change what it is to be human?  What happens to our identity, not just as members of the human race, but also as individuals?  These are only a few of many questions this new technology raises.

Let’s focus on how nanotechnology challenges some of our common conceptions about who we are, not only as individuals, but also as genders, sexes, and ethnicity.  We like to think of ourselves, individually, as distinct and unique identities.  We even think it’s silly to ask what constitutes that identity.  “I’m me!” we declare rather indignantly, as though it’s just too obvious to even question.  But the problem of personal identity becomes clear once we start to look for the reasons we claim we are who we are.

Let us take an example first related in print in antiquity by Plutarch.  In this example, the question at issue is how it is possible for something to persist (that is, to retain its identity) through changes.  In terms of an analogy to race, say, it’s the question of how much ethnicity one retains when one’s ancestry involves multiple races. In terms of an analogy to the effect of nanotechnology on human beings, the question becomes how much a person is still a human being if many of its organs, for example, are replaced by machines.

Plutarch wasn’t the first to raise the question of how something remains the same through changes.  But his example is likely the nicest illustration of it.  Plutarch asks us to consider a specific ship, the ship of Theseus, whose planks are replaced with new ones as the old planks decay.  The problem is how the ship remains the same even though its parts have been replaced, one by one, over the years?  Is it the same ship or another one?

The problem can be complicated in a couple of ways.  First, instead of the parts being swapped out over the course of years, it happens on one voyage.  New planks are stored on the ship of Theseus, and as it sails to its destination, the old planks are replaced with the new ones.  A second complication arises if we put behind the ship of Theseus another ship that scoops up the discarded planks and replaces its own with those thrown overboard by the ship of Theseus.  Does the ship of Theseus remain the same in either scenario?

We can bring this illustration closer to home by suggesting an experience that you might likely have had: seeing someone after many years apart.  Did their changed appearance startle you?  Had they changed so much, in fact, that you did not recognize them?  By equating identity with sameness of composition, that is, by saying that identity is determined by the parts of something remaining the same, you run into the problem of how things still seem the same even when their parts are changed.

There is no doubt that we will be confronted by the problem of identity with respect to nanotechnology, just as we’re already confronting it in discussions of cloning.  If it becomes possible to revive dead brain tissue through nanotechnological manipulation or replacement, will we say that the person who was dead is now alive, but not identical to who she was prior to the procedure?  This is also the case when we find that, genetically, all people are essentially constituted by the the same DNA.  This knowledge casts doubt on making distinctions between people based on race.

Philosophers have puzzled over the problem of identity for thousands of years.  Doubtless it will not be resolved soon.

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