technology

Throughout history, water management has meant constructing dams, digging and drilling wells, and extending canals and pipelines into cities and farmers’ fields. Industrialized nations have been spectacularly successful at delivering vast amounts of water wherever and whenever it was required. In wealthy countries, water has been readily available to humans, their farms, factories and power-generating stations, with sufficient quantities left over for gardens, parks and swimming pools. Imagine Las Vegas. ...

As revolutions go, this is no big deal: stain-resistant pants, sunscreens that go on clear, hockey sticks with extra zing. But perhaps that’s the point with nanotechnology. When the real transformation is occurring in spaces dwarfed by the thickness of this page, the results may seem inconsequential at first. Yet with science and capital now collaborating in manipulating atoms, these products are only the start. Its promoters predict that nanotechnology will become as common as plastic. Its critics agree, and warn of impacts as inescapable as the plastic jetsam now littering the globe.