Ceramics into next millennium

Overpopulation is the overriding problem of the twenty-first century, and water is key to human survival. Irrigation, desalination, filtration, and aquaculture are the key technologies and, given the natural abundance of oxides, ceramics are the key materials. High strength saline cements, semipermeable membranes, antibacterial coatings, limestone farming, accretion chemistry, and sonar systems for massive fish farms are concepts worthy of consideration in the twenty-first century. All will involve the use of vast amounts of oxide materials, mainly cement, concrete, synthetic coral, together with ceramic membranes and transducers. The scaling up process for engineering megaworks will be matched by equally interesting scaling down processes in which ceramic, electronic, and optical components are made smaller and smaller until they disappear inside integrated inorganic systems which rival biological systems both in scale and complexity. The age of engineering microworks is upon us, and in the coming century a global system will evolve which involves the integration of human and machine intelligence.