AN ALPHABET OF TOMORROW (N-T)

Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the art and science of manipulating matter at the near-atomic scale, and may completely transform manufacturing and medicine. Nanotechnological processes may also be either "bottom-up" or "top-down". "Bottom-up" nanotechnology refers to construction at the atomic level practically one atom at a time. It may therefore involve future "nanobots" or "nanites" assembling new products at the atomic scale, and potentially turning one material into another, self-replicating, or being injected into the human body to repair damage and target disease at the cellular level.

Top-down nanotechnology involves atomic-precision manufacturing using more conventional "large scale" production. As reported by the Nanotech Project, there are already over 500 consumer products that incorporate nanotechnology, including strengthened plasma screens, tougher car paints, improved golf clubs, more effective sun creams, and OLED displays and longer-lasting batteries for mobile phones. More information can be found on the future technologies page, from the Foresight Nanotech Institute, or in this fantastic video on the Twinkie Guide to Nanotechnology.

Oil Shortage. We live on a planet and within economies that are far too dependent on oil. Estimates vary for exactly when we will cease to be able to take out of the ground or ocean bed that black syrup that fuels our cars, fertilizes and transports our food, generates some of our electricity, and is used in the manufacture of products from DVDs to clothing, medicines to microchips, and plastic bags to refrigerators. However, there is now increasing evidence that we will pass "peak oil" -- or in other words a state where there is less oil left in the ground that we've taken out -- within a decade. An oil crash is subsequently on the near horizon, with a ten times increase in the price of oil by 2015 now not an uncommon prediction. You can find some excellent information on the current peak oil situation at TheOilDrum.com.

As the above hopefully starts to suggest, the most important fact to appreciate is that oil production does not have to cease or even fall significantly for an oil crash to have a profound impact on our lives and economies. As the superb resource LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net explains, a shortfall between (rising) demand and supply of as little as 10 to 15 percent "will be enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty". The pending oil shortage is of course just one element of the broader agenda of resource depletion identified elsewhere within this Future A-Z. However, it is the one most likely to bite first and with such veracity that we need to be thinking about the implications far more than we are today. There will be life beyond an oil crash. But is will not entirely be life as we currently know it.

Population Ageing. As the average life expectancy for a human being continues to rise, the old are becoming a larger and larger proportion of the population. This in turn is raising significant welfare and healthcare challenges for all nations, as well as presenting new business opportunities as "grey power" becomes a force to be reckoned with in the marketplace.

Whilst a significant minority of the old are now affluent in their own right, across the developed world unless retirement ages start to rise it will be impossible for the young to support an increasingly ageing population at even their current standard of living. Traditionally the old have been stereotyped as physically and/or mentally unable to work. However, whilst for some this will remain the case, many individuals in their late 60s and into their 70s remain capable of productive activity. Basic economics will also mean that many older people will be unable to stop working at a traditional retirement age. Companies therefore need to start coming up with far more creative strategies to capitalize on the skills and knowledge of older workers. In parallel, businesses also need to start planning for older people as older customers. With medical and other technological advances continuing to accrue, "quality of life" will increasingly be a service not just in demand, but capable of actually being supplied.

Quantum Computing. Quantum computers are potentially the ultimate calculating machines. They will store and process data in "qubits" using quantum mechanical phenomenon such as "superimposition" and "entanglement" that enable the storage and processing of not just a binary "1" or "0", but also many states of data in-between. In this sense, quantum computers will be the first digital devices capable of working in many shades of grey.

Quantum computers will potentially be many orders of magnitude more powerful than today's electronic computers and even future DNA-based biocomputers. This is because they will be highly parallel as they will be potentially capable of processing a million or more qubits at the same time. Although quantum computing is highly complex and largely theoretical, a good summary article can be found on here.

Whilst quantum computing is very, very much a field in its infancy, some proof-of-concept quantum computers have already been created in research labs, including those of IBM. Canadian company D-Wave Systems has created a 16 qubit quantum computer capable of playing Sudoku, and claims to be "the world's first and only source of quantum computing for commercial applications". A BBC Technology News Story on quantum computing and D-Wave Systems can be found here.

Resource Depletion. Resource depletion refers to the human race running out of natural resources. As explored in more depth in the second programme of my Challenging Reality TV series, resource depletion is also inevitable within an effectively closed system like Planet Earth. Quite why more attention is not focused on this fact is somewhat of a mystery. It is indeed fortunate that almost incidentally measures starting to be taken to combat climate change will in tandem lessen our rate of resource usage.

Alongside an oil shortage, within the next twenty to fourty years precious metals including indium, gallium, platinum, lithium and gold -- and as used not least in electronics and batteries -- are likely to be in shorter and shorter suppply. We may also hit "peak water", with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon having now repeatedly warned that future water shortages may well be a threat to "economic growth, human rights, health, safety and national security" within a couple of decades.

Coping most successfully with resource depletion requires a broad range of strategies. These include improved recycling, the end of our disposable culture and a return to taking care of things and repairing them when they go wrong. We also need to make investments in renewable and alternative energy sources -- including wind farms and nuclear power -- and in the longer-term to seek resources from space. Just one great source of information on resource depletion is this New Scientist Article auditing the Earth's "natural wealth".

Space Travel. Given both the practicalities of resource depletion and our lust to explore the unknown, the human race will in the future either routinely venture into space or will become extinct. Indeed, as Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, the Russian scientist who first envisioned the use of rockets in space travel once put it, "Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever".

The International Space Station continues -- if slowly -- to progress. Plans for bases on the Moon have also been announced by several governments and government agencies, including those of the United States, Russia and China (and as detailed in the Helium-3 Power Fact File). Private space ventures such as the "world's first spaceline" Virgin Galactic are also continuing to gather momentum, and will soon reduce the currently very high cost of space tourism. For more information on our current and future exploration and inhabitation of the final frontier see, for example, SpaceFuture.com.

Teleworking. Teleworking is where people work remotely from a company workplace using information technology to complete activities and to stay in touch. Most teleworkers work from home, whilst others may work out of their car or from a local telecottage or other public location.

Teleworking may benefit individuals by removing the daily commute and allowing them more flexibility in balancing their work and home lives. Organizations may also benefit from reduced real estate costs, a wider potential labour pool, increases in employee productivity, and an increased reliance to terrorism or natural disasters as all of their workers are never physically co-located. Broader society may also benefit from teleworking due to reduced travel and an associated fall in traffic congestion, pollution and resource consumption.

Teleworking (also referred to as telecommuting) is very much a growing phenomenon with a great many people now working remotely at least some of the time. For example, in the United States, and as reported here, at least 29 million people work remotely some of the time, whilst in the UK over 2 million people now use information technology to work remotely, with the former Department of Trade and Industry having published this teleworking guidance. Across Europe more broadly, it has been reported that about six per cent of workers telework for at least ten per cent of their time.