[Packratt]

It's hard to play 'science fiction writer' and predict exactly how far technology will progress when it's still in it's infancy. After all, many thought we would be floating around in flying cars by now and technology hasn't really brought us there, but few predicted we would be sitting here typing messages to each other on boxes.

Nanotechnology will impact our lives, but it's hard to determine to what degree that it will and that all depends on what directions we take down the nanotech road. There are definitely many caveats, the grey ooze of uncontrolled nanotech replicators spreading over the entire planet or the biowarfare nanotech that can engineer dissassemblers that would take you apart one atom at a time from the inside out.

Yet there are also many beneficial possibilities, from simple material improvements in the strength of the metal parts we create or by manufacturing advances that would make human labor all but a memory. (whether that is good or bad is also a matter of implementation, putting everyone out of work is not necessarily a good thing in and of itself as we see today with unemployment rates advancing due to productivity advances, in part).

Ultimately it is never the technology that you should fear, a crude wooden spear kills just the same as a nanotechnology virus. Wonder about those who would control technology, not the technology itself.