Nanoplanet: molecular engineering in the time of ecological crisis.

Nanotechnology, or molecular engineering, is a hypothetical productive system based on the precise arrangement of atoms into molecular level devices and macroscale structures. As a response to the current environmental predicament it appears to engage with both long-term, cumulative damage and non-linear runaway accidents. As a complex adaptive system with capacities for self-replication and self-transformation, nanotech has the potential to engage with runaway events on their own terrain, thereby constituting a response to catastrophe which runs the risk of becoming as ecologically tumultuous as the catastrophe itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]