Many biological structures including viral capsids,  transmembrane proteins and filaments (DNA, F-actin , bacterial flagella and microtubules) are well known to undergo conformational transitions.  The field of confotronics deals with the many-body dynamics of a large number of soft switchable  monomer units constituting and animating such complex structures. In this talk I will outline how Nature and our man-made technology utilize confotronic motifs to design highly versatile and functional soft machines from the nano- up to the macro- scale.