U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Advanced Manufacturing Office

OIT Times: Long Term Technology Trends--Potential Major Impacts on 'Industries of the Future'

March 22, 2001

In this session, moderated by Ed Starke, Chairman of the National Materials Advisory Board, representatives from the fields of biochemistry, nanotechnology, and the digital economy explored technology trends that may have a dramatic impact on the Industries of the Future.

Biotechnology. Dr. Ganesh Kishore, Chief Scientist with Auxyn Biosciences Venture Funds, discussed genetically engineered crop products and their place in society future. Given our planet growing population and steady loss of both topsoil and fresh water, we must reduce use of non-renewable products, increase efficiency of nutrient use, and improve agronomic traits.

Genomics can oordinate every gene with a function and put it to work in a more powerful way,said Kishore. Boll Gard cotton, for example, produces its own defenses against the bollworm, avoiding the use of over 4 million liters of insecticide annually since 1996. Other bioengineered crops are more resistant to cold, drought, and pests, or can withstand herbicides that are unable to distinguish between crops and weeds. Biotechnology will have a profound impact on food and feed, and on the production of green chemicals and green fuels.

Nanotechnologies. Dr. James Murday of the Interagency National Nanotechnology Initiative Coordinating Committee predicts, anoscience is working towards a revolution.The ability to work at the molecular level, atom by atom, to create large structures with fundamentally new properties has huge implications for energy conversion and storage, agriculture, information technology, and other areas. Nanotechnologies are not limited to the far future, but are here now. ee right at the foot of dramatic growth,proclaimed Murday. he fields of physics, chemistry, and biology will all come together on the nanometer scale./p>

Internet Technology and Global Manufacturing. Dalibor Vrsalovic of Intel Corporation stated that the Internet has allowed the creation of a virtual factory. E-commerce has already dropped a person from one side of the traditional commerce picture as clients talk directly with servers. The vision of Internet manufacturing is to connect customers and suppliers to the equipment on the floor, so they can monitor and interface with their own parts of the manufacturing process. This will require standards, guidelines, security, and cooperation. The factory floor will have few people and lots of equipment, large servers, and a control center to manage the system.