Need & Scope

of
Converging Technologies

Preetam Kumar Sharma

6th Sem, CCT, Jaipur
 AGENDA

• Introduction
• Future Predictions from Past
• What is NBIC
• Scope of CCT
• Summary
• Problems???
“There is nothing permanent except change.”

Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 525-475 B.C.)

 Brief History of Change
Generations Ago
100,000 Speech
750 Agriculture
500 Writing
400 Libraries
40 Universities
24 Printing
16 Accurate Clocks
5 Telephone
4 Radio
3 Television
2 Computer
1 Internet/e-Mail
0 ?
 Predicting Future
• Everything that can be invented has been
invented.

-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of

Patents, 1899
 Predicting Future
I think there is a world market for maybe five
computers.

-IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, 1943

 Predicting Future
Computers in the future may have only 1,000
vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2
tons.

-Popular Mechanics, 1949

 Predicting Future
640K ought to be enough for anybody.

-Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, 1981

The best way
to predict the future
is to invent it.
 the Lever of Technology

"Give me a lever, a fulcrum, and place to stand and I will

move the world."

Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC)

 What is NBIC?
• Synergistic combination of four major
converging technologies each of which
are currently progressing at a rapid rate:
 (a) nanoscience and nanotechnology;
 (b) biotechnology and biomedicine;
 (c) information & comm. technology;
 (d) cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.
 NBIC

The integration and

synergy of these four
technologies (NBIC)
originate from the
nanoscale, where the
building blocks of
matter are
established.
 NBIC
(a) nanoscience and nanotechnology;
(b) biotechnology and biomedicine;
(c) information & comm. technology;
(d) cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.
 Understanding nanoscale
• Nanometer: A magical point on the length
scale where the smallest man made devices
meet the atoms and molecules of the natural
world.
– K.J.Klabunde
Richard P. Feynman 1959
 A Superminiature World Exists
There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom - December 29th 1959
– Manipulating and controlling things on a small scale
– Write the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin
• How do we write small?
• Information on a small scale
• Better electron microscopes
– The marvelous biological system
– Miniaturizing the computer
– Miniaturization by evaporation
– Problems of lubrication
– A hundred tiny hands
– Rearranging the atoms
– Atoms in a small world

Norio Taniguchi coined the term Nanotechnology in 1970s

•Nanotechnology is the common term used for
describing different types of materials, Devices
and system which have one thing in common:
Their size is one to one hundred nanometres (one
nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre).

•Nanotechnology is one of the fastest growing

new areas in science and engineering ($ 1 trillion
business by 2015! )
 Nano Size

How big (small) are we talking about?

 BIG

• 106 M =1000 km
 BIGGER

• 108M (1 lakh Km)

• View our planet
and around
 STILL BIGGER

• 109 M (1 million Km)

• The moon's orbit aound
the Earth, the furthest
humans have ever
travelled.
Largest picture taken ~1026M
NORMAL SIZE
• 1 meter (100 M)

A few localized plants

SMALLER SIZE
• 10 centimeters
(10-1M)

A leaf of a plant
STILL SMALLER SIZE
• 1 centimeter
(10-2 meter
= 0.01 meters)
A fly on a leaf
NEED MAGNIFICATION OF SIZE
• 100 micrometers
(10-3M)

An eye
The fly's eye is made of hundreds of tiny
facets, resembling a honeycomb.

source: CERN http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/microcosm

ELECTRON MICROSCOPE SIZE
• 10 micrometers

(10-4M)

fly's eye is made of hundreds

of smaller eyes. Each facet is a
small lens with light sensitive
cells underneath.

Image necessitates an electron

microscope.

source: CERN http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/microcosm

MICRO SIZE
• 1 micrometer

(10-4M)
In between the facets are
bristles which give sensory
input from the surface of
the eye.

source: CERN http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/microcosm

100 nm SIZE
• 100 nanometers
(10-6M)
Further enlragement of
the briste

source: CERN http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/microcosm

10 nm SIZE
• 10 nanometers

(10-8M)
At the centre of the cell is a tightly
coiled molecule called DNA. It
contains the genetic material
needed to duplicate the fly.

source: CERN http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/microcosm

1 nm SIZE
• 1 nanometer

source: CERN http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/microcosm

 Fraction of nm
• Carbon atom
• An essential ingredient for life
• is mostly empty space. A cloud of six
negatively charged electrons orbits the
positively charged nucleus.
 NBIC
(a) nanoscience and nanotechnology;
(b) biotechnology and biomedicine;
(c) information & comm. technology;
(d) cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.
 Biotechnology
• Any technological application that uses biological
systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to
make or modify products or processes for specific
use.
 Periods of Biotechnology History
• Pre- 1800: Early applications and speculation
• 1800-1900: Significant advances in basic
understanding
• 1900-1953: Genetics
• 1953- 1976: DNA research, science explodes
• 1977- present: modern biotechnology
 Biotechnology Time Lines
• The cell was first discovered by Robert Hooke in
1665
• The first man to witness a live cell under a
microscope was Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who in
1674 described the algaeSpirogyra and named the
moving organisms animalcules, meaning "little
animals“
• Cell Theory: cells were the basic unit of life & theory
was given by three scientists: Theodor
Schwann, Matthias Jakob Schleiden, and Rudolf
Virchow In 1839.
 Biotechnology Time Lines
• Charles Darwin in 1859 published 'The Origin of Species‘
providing idea of natural selection.
• Gregor Mendel (1822 – 1884) published his laws that
govern heredity (Father of genetics). In 1900 Hugo de
Vries, Erich Von Tschermak, and Carl Correns republished
ideas of mendel.
• In 1910 Thomas Hunt Morgan proved that genes are
carried on chromosomes.
• In 1912 Lawrence Bragg discovered that X-rays.
• Alexander Fleming Discovered penicillin in 1928.
• In 1953 Nature magazine published James Watson's and
Francis Crick's manuscript describing the double helix
structure of DNA.
 Biotechnology Time Lines
• 1966 the GENETIC CODE was "cracked". Marshall
Nirenberg
• In 1972 Paul Berg isolated and employed a restriction
enzyme to cut DNA. Berg used ligase to paste two DNA
strands together to form a hybrid circular molecule.
This was the first recombinant DNA molecule.
• In 1993 Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for inventing the technology of polymerase chain
reaction (PCR).
• In 1994 The first genetically engineered food product,
the Flavr Savr tomato, gained FDA approval.
• 2001 human genome project completed.
 NBIC
(a) nanoscience and nanotechnology;
(b) biotechnology and biomedicine;
(c) information & comm. technology;
(d) cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.
 Information & comm. technology
• Information technology (IT) is "the study, design,
development, implementation, support or
management of information systems". Information
technology is a general term that describes any
technology that helps to produce, manipulate, store,
communicate, and/or disseminate information.

• Computer science or computing science (sometimes

abbreviated CS) is the study of the theoretical
foundations of information and computation, and of
practical techniques for their implementation and
application in computer systems.
 CS & IT Time Lines
• The abacus(Roman abacus) was early used for
arithmetic tasks was used in Babylonia as early as 2400
BC.
• In 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed a loom in
which the pattern being woven was controlled
by punched cards. The series of cards could be changed
without changing the mechanical design of the loom.
This was a landmark achievement in programmability.
• In 1833, Charles Babbage moved on from developing
his difference engine (for navigational calculations) to a
general purpose design, the Analytical Engine, which
drew directly on Jacquard's punched cards for its
program storage.
 CS & IT Time Lines
• By the 1900s, earlier mechanical calculators, cash registers,
accounting machines, and so on were redesigned to use
electric motors, with gear position as the representation
for the state of a variable. (state of the art machine )
• In 1946, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And
Computer) was built. That was the starting of digital
computing.
• In 1947 William Shockley,  John Bardeen and Walter
Brattain at AT&T's Bell Labs in the United States invented
transistor ("father of the transistor“ for invention of
germanium transisitor).
• Moore’s Law (1965): no of transistors on a chip are going
to be double every year.
 Size of Transistor Trends
• 10 µm — 1971
• 3 µm — 1975
• 1.5 µm — 1982
• 1 µm — 1985
• 800 nm (0.80 µm) — 1989
• 600 nm (0.60 µm) — 1994
• 350 nm (0.35 µm) — 1995
• 250 nm (0.25 µm) — 1998
• 180 nm (0.18 µm) — 1999
• 130 nm (0.13 µm) — 2000
• 90 nm — 2002
• 65 nm — 2006
• 45 nm — 2008
• 32 nm — 2010
• 22 nm — approx. 2011
• 16 nm — approx. 2013
• 11 nm — approx. 2015

Future: quantum computer

 NBIC
(a) nanoscience and nanotechnology;
(b) biotechnology and biomedicine;
(c) information & comm. technology;
(d) cognitive science and cognitive
neuroscience.
 Cognitive Science and Cognitive
Neuroscience
• Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field
concerned with the scientific study of
biological substrates underlying cognition,
with a specific focus on the neural substrates
of mental processes. It addresses the
questions of how psychological /cognitive
functions are produced by the brain.
 Neuroscience Time Lines
• Rene Descartes (1596-1650): Mechanistic view of brain. (brain
is a part of body and can have both way interaction). Before
Descartes there were beliefs about dualism and speculation
was done on the behavior of animals.
• Luigi Galvani(1737-1798):Detected electricity in the nerves of
frogs.
• Paul Broca(1824-1880): discovered the speech production
center of the brain located in the ventroposterior region of
the frontal lobes (now known as Broca's area).
• Korbinian Brodmann (1868-1918): provided us with areal
division for brain.
 Neuroscience Time Lines

• After this period work shifted towards the nerve

studies in human. Now the latest trend is to
understand how memory is stored, where is area for
intelligence etc (till now assumed that they are in
synapse but how ???). Future is about to understand
brain-computer interface.
 Scope of CCT
Carrier as a scientist in India
• KVPY
• GATE (Graduate Aptitude test inEngineering)
• CSIR-NET (Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research-National Eligibility Test) : PhD + JRF
• DBT-NET (Department of Biotechnology-National
Eligibility Test) : PhD + JRF
• SRF (Senior Research Fellowship)
• After PhD can apply for PDF (postdoctoral
fellowship)
 Foreign Scientist
• GRE (Graduate Record Examination)
 General
 Subject

• IELTS (International English Language Testing System)

• TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) 
 Other Options
• MBA
o Health Care Management
o Communication
o Environmental Management
o Information Systems
o Internet Marketing
o Operations Management
o Human Resource Management
• Placement in any organization (company) from CCT.
• Faculty in Engineering College.
“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday
our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow:
Our life is the creation of our mind.”
-Buddha
 Summary
• Don’t Underestimate the power of technology and
be careful to call anything as impossible.
• NBIC (Converging Technologies) are current
research topic and will shape human future.
• CCT has a bright future.
• You can do whatever you want because you are the
architect for your destiny.
Fantasy is more important than knowledge !

(because knowledge is always limited) Albert Einstein

 Life
Perspective

Atom 0.1 nm
DNA (width) 2 nm
Protein 5 – 50 nm
Virus 75 – 100 nm
Materials internalized by cells < 100 nm
Bacteria 1,000 – 10,000 nm
White Blood Cell 10,000 nm

True Solution particles: < 1 nm (not visible to naked eyes)

Particles in Suspension: > 1000 nm (visible to naked eyes)
Colloidal Solution particles: 1-1000 nm (seen through scattering of light)