The future of mobile devices, the internet, and us

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William Gibson on the future

Q U O T E D

"The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can't convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years. ... We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that -- we have no idea at all now where we are going.

Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilization collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too."

-- Science fiction author William Gibson, who coined the word "cyberspace," explains why he's taken to writing about the past
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From http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/08/quoted-606.html
Originally from: http://www.silicon.com/silicon/networks/webwatch/0,39024667,39168006-1,00.htm

Soft bodied robots

Here's a great multi-disciplinary approach to robotics.

Most of today's robots are built from an assembly of stiff materials in contrast to most living systems that leverage primarily soft, elastic materials in combination with stiff materials such as bone. This article talks about a Tufts University initiative that starts with building robots that from materials that mimic biological material. It's a really interesting first step toward their ultimate goal "...to develop systems and devices -- soft-bodied robots-- based on biological materials and on the adaptive mechanisms found in living cells, tissues and whole organisms".

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070128105355.htm

Desktop Fabricator

How cool is this?

A universal fabricator for the home for US$2400! This lets you "print" physical structures that would look similar to injection molded plastic.

Imagine being able to design 3d art or a gadget of whatever type on your computer, press 'go' and have it created as a physical item from one or more materials. Make a watch band, an instrument case, a box, a stand. While you might not make too many things that couldn't be created by hand, what an fantistic example of the amazing rate of technology change. Commercial versions of these machines cost $100K and up and tend to be in the hands only of specialist manufacturers.

Think about where this could get with more development. Cheap universal fabricators for all, sold in same way that desktop printers are sold today. Lots of materials. More sophisticated processes. Push button creation of new items that otherwise you'd have to buy from a shop. This could be as simple as:

1. I need a watch band / piece of jewlery / part for the car / computer component
2. Find one online
3. Purchase the plan/recipe
4. Start the fabricator
5. Come back in an hour and it's ready to go!

Here's an example that might be closer in time. The rare car shop that today holds lots of rare stock could move to having a fabricator and be able to create parts on demand.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn10922-desktop-fabricator-may-kickstart-home-revolution.html
http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Update

plaasjaapie has been good enough to point out a couple of other really interesting universal fabricator projects. RepRap and Tommelise. The anticpated cost for a RepRap machine is US$400 and Tomelise is aiming for a wooden construction with costs of US$150. Wow!