www.roanoke.com

The Internet has been abuzz this week about Morph, a concept cellphone developed by the Finnish company Nokia and the University of Cambridge. The Morph phone doesn't exist -- yet -- but there are images of how it might function at an exhibit in New York's Museum of Modern Art called "Design and the Elastic Mind." If you can negotiate the eccentric, Flash-based navigation, you can check out the hundreds of entries in the exhibit at moma.org (hint: search for Nokia after you've clicked on the exhibit) -- some are funny, some poignant, some silly, some bizarre and some that look as if they might become really useful someday.

According to Nokia Design, the Morph phone concept is meant to "illustrate how a portable personal device can connect its owner to the hidden information in the surrounding physical world and, at the same time, to the massive global data, information and digital content via the Internet." The device will be based on nanoscale technologies and have some features that are still in the realm of science fiction. It will be flexible and transparent. It can be unfolded to have a keyboard or folded into a strip and worn as a wristband. It can take pictures and movies and change colors. A concept video shows it reporting the levels of air pollution or recommending washing and peeling an apple before eating. It will be water-repellent and self-cleaning. It will get its power from tiny photocell "grass" blades. The device might also sense local weather, tell the wearer about specials as she enters a store, turn her car on and off and unlock her office door.

Can a cellphone really do all these things? Not yet. Right now the Morph phone is a concept, but it is based on real technologies. It makes extensive use of nanotechnology. "Nano" comes from the Greek word for "dwarf," and a nanometer is a unit of length, equal to one-billionth of a meter. According to Jennifer Kahn, writing for National Geographic, a nanometer is "the amount of time a man's beard grows in the time it takes to raise a razor to his face." It's pretty unimaginably small. A comma could hold a half a million nanometers. "Nanotechnology" is technology that manipulates materials on the atomic and molecular scales.

Unlike the Nokia evangelicals, some groups are very nervous about nanotechnology.

Science fiction writers have been addressing the potential dangers of nanotech for at least the past 20 years. Greg Bear's book "Blood Music" was published in 1985 and tells of a scientist who had created nanoscale computers in the laboratory. When he was told to shut down his project, he injected the tiny robots ("nanobots") into himself and smuggled them home. The tiny computers were self-replicating -- they could make copies of themselves using whatever materials they found at hand. The scientist and everything around him were quickly reduced to "grey goo," nothing but a homogeneous mass of self-replicating nanobots.

Is "grey goo" a real danger? Probably not. According to the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, free-floating, self-replicating nanobots aren't likely to be feasible to build, much less survive on their own. There are other benefits and dangers that are a lot more likely. Nanotechnology is expected to lead to molecular manufacturing, which may have many wonderful applications but unknown environmental repercussions. Medical therapeutic nanoparticles and nanocapsules may be used much like the 1966 sci-fi story "Fantastic Voyage," in which miniaturized doctors were injected into a patient's blood stream. The greatest dangers may come from tiny weapons and surveillance devices that will be hard to detect.

Is nanotech a reality? Yes, very much so. Nanotechnology has been used for years in popular products such as Eddie Bauer "nanocare" trousers. Nanoscale "whiskers" attach to cotton fabric, making it stain- and water-resistant and not prone to wrinkling. Sunscreen manufacturers have found that using nano-size zinc or titanium dioxide particles makes for a clear lotion, rather than the familiar white sunscreen. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have even made tiny nanomachines that can move an object that is big enough to see without a microscope.

So when will we be able to buy a Nokia Morph? Probably not for at least seven to 20 years. By then, we can expect great leaps forward in nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, perhaps as far as having molecular factories cheap enough for individual consumers to own. There's no stopping nanotech; scientists agree that even if they officially banned research in this area, there would be continuing work done underground, and it's too important a technology to leave to the bad guys.

Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.