So small and scientific, it can't possibly apply to me!

That's where we find we're wrong. There are already a multitude of applications being developed and, according to the magazine Bilan, (you can listen to excellent summary of the article in French on the SRS radio - fast forward the slider to 1 hour 21 mins), Switzerland's working on combining and bringing together schools of hi-tech and IT engineering and R&D to produce five main areas of excellence:

1. micro and nanoelectronics

2. microelectromechanics

3. captors and sensors

4. systems and software

5. communications

Their mission is to develop future hi-tech applications using digital techniques that will improve both the safety and health of people and benefit the environment:

• Humans - clothes, shoes, watches, implants (e.g. automatic correction of sight), analysis or automatic treatment of illnesses (e.g. diabetes)

• Sensors - automatically detect, for example, the quality of the water in a lake or in the air and set off an alarm in case of problems such as pollution, epidemics or natural disasters

• Buildings or cities - monitor and reduce energy consumption and use

• Outer space - tiny satellites weighing only a kilo can be sent up into space that beam back large quantities of information on a myriad of subjects 

• Virtual world - interactive simulators controlled by robots can reconstruct areas in real time or provide 3D images to make working models that can be tested before they're actually built.

The advantage of using nanotechnology is that components consume very little electricity and so are inexpensive in terms of energy needs.

Communication is wireless and therefore far easier to control. And, while the calculators and minuscule sensors are infinissimally small, there is mega scope for application.