The World in 2030

86 The World in 2030
in a few hours. Duplicate nanofactories will cost the
same as any other nano-built product. The capital
cost of manufacturing will be negligible by today’s
standards, and manufacturing capacity can be doubled
in a matter of hours. 173
In ‘The Extreme Future’ Dr. James Canton sees
nanotechnology potentially offering a similar bonanza:
Nanoscience represents a radical change in material
science, drugs, devices, and manufacturing. Nanobased
products could change everything, reducing
functions down to 100,000 times smaller than a
human hair. Total nanotech investments worldwide
were more than $10 billion in 2005. By 2008, the
nanomarket may grow to more than $32 billion
worldwide. Nanomaterials will drive the near-term
market growth, while nano-devices will dominate future
growth. 174
The implications of the coming nanotech revolutions are
extreme and by 2030 we will be in the thick of it with
astonishing new applications enriching (and, perhaps,
potentially endangering) our physical world. Nanotech
is one of the more extreme ‘wild cards’ in the technology
pack and it is possible that some of the problems examined
elsewhere in this report could be completely or partially
solved by the science (e.g. nanotech might provide new
sources of clean energy). In 2003 the late Professor Richard
Smalley 175 of Rice University in Texas – a Nobel Laureate
prize winner for his chemistry research – delivered a lecture
called ‘Nanotechnology, the S & T Workforce, Energy &