Nano Future 2030

I saw an article about Killer Asteriods and how Humanity must work together.
See Killer Asteroids on Space.com

This brings us back to “Can Humans work together?” Even if we have nanotechnology, this group of animals may not get it together in time to fix something like a killer asteroid. Look at the American political debacle taking place today. Do you think anyone could fix a problem with that emotion and irrational thinking in place? I don’t.

What can we do about it? I’m not sure how, but the human race must decide to be rational and put away animal emotion when making hard decisions. The human animal never does the rational thing when they are under the control of emotion. That is what emotion is, a non-rational motivation system. You do things based on values based on animal instinct rather than careful thought and values based on knowledge and calm consideration of facts.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m human and I want to be around other humans. But I look back over history and I see an emotion driven animal making decisions based on animal concerns such as,

• Are you part of my core group?
• Are you loyal to our group?
• Does this decision help or hurt my core group?

Until the average human can think about things from a standpoint a few steps beyond this emotion driven self interest, we don’t stand a chance at survival.

When an outside threat overwhelms our several antagonistic groups, we can reformat our emotional values and redirect our aggression from our neighbor to the new threat. But that takes time, and is an animal response. That is not sufficient, nor are we likely to survive when the threat is too quick for the animal to change it’s threat assessment or goes counter to a long standing self interest fight.

We need to work on rational thinking as a tool of the human race for race survival. At the moment, there is little awareness or peer support for such an effort.

What does this have to do with nanotechnology? Nano is power in a tiny package. Who would give a stick of dynamite and a lighter to an excited monkey?

I’ve been thinking a bit about when these fantastic advances will arrive and will we survive that long? This is 2011. So, 19 years till 2030. It takes a good five years to see something move from the lab into your home. It could speed up as we learn to build things using 3d printers or in the case of nano, 3d nanoprinters.

I’m interested in 3d printers because it lets you build details on an object down to 200 microns today, or about 0.2 millimeters. That makes it possible to build the labs and infrastructure for a nanolab. I’m looking into building a 3d printer at home but it will take money and time to get it working. One guy on the internet claims to have a DIY 3d printer close to production ( the kit) and his detail is down in that neighborhood of 200 microns. The big professional units ($25,000) are already down there.

We need an infrastructure for the nanolab. Transportation, manipulation, tools. The big positive is that the material cost is much lower than a macro lab. Instead of needing a gallon of a special liquid at $500 a gallon, you only need a milliliter.

So, you build a nanolab and build tools to move things around, to cut things, to bend things, to etch things. That lets you play in the 1 to 10 micron range. Just one step down toward the ultimate level of 10 nanometers.

I figure it’s just a matter of using good optics, going slow and you could probably build things down at the 1 micron range. That is almost nano.

I hope these neutrinos are faster just for the disruptive effect. Ether way, by my reading of ST, Einstein only assumed light was the fastest thing due to a lack of alternative candidates for such an honor. AND, finding something that goes faster has no negative effect on his theory of relativity that I can see. Things are still relative, you just have a new speedometer. In the ST, he defined time as the relative movement of clock hands. In the GT, I don’t see him defining time in the same strict sense but he assumed it to be equivalent to a physical dimension. That is a rather large mental jump from ST to GT. One that I have trouble seeing any justification for.

Time is a nice concept. It lets us talk about yesterday and tomorrow as if they exist in reality rather than in our memory and our imagination. It lets us compute speeds and distances using math. But that does not make it more than a concept or a real thing in the universe.

Would some physicist please define time and point to something in the world that “is” time? And I don’t mean clock hands. Where have you measured some aspect of this 4th dimension that is NOT clock hands or the equivalent?

This newscientist article talks about how to use the applications on your iPhone when you can’t find or pickup the actual phone. They use a camera to figure out where you are pressing the buttons on your empty palm as if you were holding an invisible phone. It’s impractical at the moment due to the need for that camera. They use a head mounted camera. I want to look at alternative methods to do the same thing. This would allow you to wear your phone on your belt and use your hand for the “phone” input and output. Just one step along the evolution path to a in-body phone.

How about using a ring as the pick up device? I’ve not seen special function rings but they would be great if the electronics can be small. A ring on your finger could have enough volume for a camera to watch fingers dancing on your palm. The ring would create its own power from motion energy capture like some watches do now. A tiny magnetic weight inside the ring moves about as your hand accelerates and tiny coils capture electrical power from that relative motion. The camera watches what happens in the palm of your hand, interprets the video motions into command signals, and sends a RF signal to your phone in a belt pod, pocket or purse. If you have a RF receiver as an ear clip audio input/output, your phone can signal to you when you press an invisible button in your hand or relay the actual audio conversation to you from the phone. The phone stays in your pocket, purse or belt pod, but you can use it as normal.

As for video and being able to see the phone display, you only need video relayed to eyeglasses, or a contact lens capable of projecting video into your eyeball.

This creates a functional input device for your hand that relies on nothing but a ring on your finger.

Can you see where this is going? One day the phone will be a small computer device you carry on a belt or in your purse. It becomes the computer in your body intranet. You never touch it during normal phone operation, but it has input and output (IO) elements that are tightly coupled to your own input/output ports( eyes, ears, voice). Later on, that tiny hub that you have to carry about, will shrink until it is too small to see and will slip inside the skin and the IO elements will blend with your IO elements and the human animal will be augmented.

Now, did the phone evolve or did you evolve?