To Really understand the future, you have to suspend disbelief and imagine for a moment that software isn't just code on a screen; it's also matter. It's physical—as real as the chair you are sitting in. And it's programmable. Programmable matter. It's a world that re-searchers such as Richard Minn, an electrical engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, are building—one artificial atom at a time. An early beneficiary of this work could be information systems. At a NIST lab in Boulder, Colo., Minn is using a quantum dot, also known as an artificial atom because of its capability to hold an electron in place. In this case, the electron is placed around a positively charged particle. They combine, annihilate each other and emit a photon, the smallest pulse of light.
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