The idea of ​​microscopic robots traveling through your body may sound like a 1960s science fiction novel but, in the next decade, it could become scientific fact . Imagine clogged arteries being cleared, cancer cells being detected and destroyed, and kidney stones being dissolved, all performed by tiny robots, eliminating the need for expensive and invasive surgeries. These are just some of the possible applications of nanotechnology in medicine, also called nanomedicine. Nanomedicine can greatly improve medicine and healthcare beyond our imagination. Nanotechnology was first mentioned in 1959 in a speech given by physicist Richard Feynman. Although he didn't use the term, he described a process by which a pair of normal-sized robotic arms would build a copy of itself that was one-tenth its size. That pair of arms would continue the process and so on until the arms reached the size of a molecule. (Patel 63)This would be the level of nanotechnology. Nano comes from the Greek word meaning “dwarf”. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, and when we talk about nanotechnology we are talking about devices on the scale of 1 to 100 nanometers. To help visualize how small it is, a germ is about 1000 nm wide, a human hair is about 100,000 nm wide. (Marchant, GE 231) The tunneling microscope, invented in 1981 by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, allowed humans to see individual atoms. Binnig and Rohrer both worked as physicists for the computer company IBM. The atomic force microscope was invented a few years later and allowed the user to actually move atoms using a feeler with an extremely small, sharp needle at the end that allows him to see and move atoms halfway down the paper. ...and we will be able to create our own virtual realities that integrate all of our senses, expanding our intelligence in ways we can't imagine. Nanomedicine will give rise to artificial intelligence by providing humans with highly detailed scans and diagrams of the human brain and how it works. Eventually, AI will be able to think and have emotional responses thanks to the information collected by the nanobots. The two technologies will feed each other into a world that could be wilder than any science fiction novel ever written. (Kurzweil 40-46) It is clear that nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and even carry humanity to the next evolutionary leap, but great care must be taken to ensure we get there safely. Once technology becomes smarter than humanity, we may no longer be able to control our destiny.