http://spectrum.ieee.org/video/robotics/medical-robots/video-miniature-robots-perform-surgery

Progress is being made on all fronts with regards to microscopic medical devices.  It’s not taking the form we might have imagined once upon a time, no self-replicating nano-bots, no magic chemical elixirs to restore youth and vigor.  But you know, the future never does.  You can see the roots of many technologies in the kids of things futurists and science friction writers come up with, but the ultimate result, the practical application is often very different.

Most of the time, IMHO, it’s somehow even cooler, these future technologies come to life.  When you read about them, when you try to envision them, your ideas are almost always incomplete.  You’re working with the gestalt, the overall concept, rather than the specifics.  But when you see those specifics operating IRL, when you see the bits turn and bend, when you see the shadows they cast and the way they hang in solution, they suddenly become the kind of real that your imagination can’t quite compare to.