Nanotechnology makes use of the fact that the laws of nature often show a totally different face if we look at them using a scale of one millionth of a millimetre; in such cases we find phenomena diverging from the accustomed behaviour. In addition to describing such effects, the lecture presents new nanotechnology solutions that have brought a leap forward in the development of electronics, optics and informatics and are now rapidly spreading to medicine, environment protection and energetics as well. Two ways of creating nanostructures are presented: from top to bottom (“small from the large”) and atomic self-organisation i.e. “from bottom to top”. Finally, we hear about new vistas of development that have been opened by carbon-based nanostructures discovered in recent years.