nanobots

See the following -

Imagining a Future American Culture of Health

One of the most thought-provoking articles I've read lately is Tom Vanderbilt's Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot in Nautilus. In it, he discusses how our technological visions of the future seem to do much better on predicting the technology of that future than they do the culture in which they will be used. As he says, "But when it comes to culture we tend to believe not that the future will be very different than the present day, but that it will be roughly the same. Try to imagine yourself at some future date.... Chances are, that person resembles you now."

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Is "Modern Medicine" Indistinguishable From Magic?

Evidently, most of health care's technologies are not yet sufficiently advanced. For example, just think about chemotherapy.  We've spent lots of money developing ever more powerful, always more expensive, hopefully more precise drugs to combat cancers.  In many cases they've helped improve cancer patients' lifespans -- adding months or even years of life.  But few who take them would say the drugs are without noticeable side effects -- e.g., patients often suffer nausea, vomiting, hair loss, fatigue, appetite loss, sexual issues, or a mental fog that is literally called "chemo brain."...

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Will Octobot Transform Medicine?

Acclaimed futurist Ray Kurzweil has a lot of bold predictions (including that computers will become smarter than us within a few decades), and some of his most interesting ones deal with how technology -- especially nanotechnology -- will soon totally revamp how we manage our health, leading to longer, healthier lives and hugely increased intelligence. Sounds like science fiction, right? Meet Octobot. Harvard researchers have unveiled what they describe as the "first autonomous, entirely soft robot," which they call Octobot (it has eight arms, like an octopus). It has no metal, no battery, no electronics of any sort, yet manages to move under its own power. It uses a "microfluidic logic circuit" rather than a circuit board to control the movements of its arms and to power itself along, using gas reactions...