 composition. Hospital courier robots deliver mail as well as medical records throughout hospitals. Factory robots do a wide variety of tasks, from assembly to welding to mov- ing parts. NASA has designed Robonauts to take space walks and fix space platforms and satellites when they go awry. A fascinating new development is the micromechanical flying insect. Say a country is at war in an unfamiliar territory, and a battle is about to begin. The enemy doesn't know that its every move is being monitored by dime-sized flying robotic insects equipped with tiny cameras. It is likely that the first use of these robotic bugs will be as spy flies; they'll be used for reconnaissance missions, con- trolled by soldiers on the ground to relay images of troop movements and to detect biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. The robotic insects would also be able to land on an enemy vehicle and place an electronic tag on it. These tiny flying robots would also be valuable in the aftermath of disasters. Their small size and ability to fly and hover would make them useful for searching for people buried in rubble. They could fly between crevices that humans and larger machines cannot navigate. Other uses include traffic monitoring and border surveillance. These "spy flies" are yet another example of how technology can help us perform dangerous tasks, allowing humans to stay out of harm's way. Evil Uses of Technology At this point, you may be wondering about the possibility of the malicious use of all these technologies. I like the way one of my colleagues, Steve Riley of Microsoft, has com- mented on this observation: "Some readers may very well envision how malicious people might abuse many of these wonderful technologies, subverting their purposes into mechanisms of possibly great harm, and say that, therefore, such technology shouldn't Introduction be developed." It is worth noting this possibility, but as Steve also comments, "Technol- ogy is neutral; innovation knows no political allegiance. It's the decisions that humans 