All posts by Paul Raven

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Femtotech: the next big small thing

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Still battering on about nanotech? Man, you’re soooo noughties, get with the program. The new small-scale frontier is femtotech – we’re talking customised atomic nuclei strings here. Says Professor Alexander Bolonkin:

The form of matter containing and subsuming all the atom’s particles [from nucleons (neutrons, protons), electrons and other nuclear particles] into the nucleus is named degenerate matter. Degenerate matter found in white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. Conventionally this matter in such large astronomical objects has a high temperature (as independent particles!) and a high gravity adding a forcing, confining pressure in a very massive celestial objects. In nature, degenerate matter exists stably (as a big lump) to our knowledge only in large astronomical masses (include their surface where gravitation pressure is zero) and into big nuclei of conventional matter. Our purpose is to design artificial small masses of synthetic degenerate matter in form of an extremely thin strong thread (fiber, filament, string), round bar (rod), tube, net (dense or non dense weave and mesh size) which can exist at Earth-normal temperatures and pressures. Note that such stabilized degenerate matter in small amounts does not exist in Nature as far as we know.

All strictly theoretical at the moment, it seems. But hey – if you were worried that putting nanotech into a science fiction story sounds a bit passée nowadays, at least now you can make the jump to the next level without worrying that you’re just making it up out of whole cloth.

Beyond Molecular Nanotechnology is Femtotech : Proposal for Synthesizing Degenerate Matter

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iHobo augmented reality app: a spoof with truth

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So, did you see the Wired spoof piece about the iHobo augmented reality application? Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a joke, they make that pretty clear. But it’s a clever joke – and not just because it says a number of things about technology, class and culture.

iHobo - spoof augmented reality app screenshot

What iHobo does is highlight not only the imminent mundanity of augmented reality – a technology whose path to near-ubiquity in the developed world is defined only by time and falling prices – but also the fact that we’ve always had augmented reality. It’s not a thing you buy, it’s a thing you do.

Reality is perception – when I go to, say, Berlin, whose Berlin do I see? Do I see the Berlin of the German Tourist Board or the Lonely Planet writers? Do I see the Berlin of a modern experimental architect, or the Berlin of Albert Speer? Of the gallery-owning cognoscenti or the punk squatter kids? They’re all different cities, yet they share the same geographical space.

In addition to time and space, there’s another dimension you can move in – call it culture, call it perspective, call it viewpoint, call it contextual relevance, call it popularity. It’s all of those things, and none. It’s something we build as groups and as individuals, a shared semiotic system of value and meaning – and soon we’ll be able to travel inside other people’s systems at the swipe of a finger across a touchscreen.

Of course, there’s a very good chance I’m stating the obvious here*, but this ties in so closely to a bunch of the weirder theories of reality I had when I was younger that I can’t help but geek out about it. Sorry.

[ * Seriously, sometimes it’s a real struggle finding stuff that I think won’t just bounce right off of you jaded lot. But then I console myself with the thought that I’m lucky to have a very smart and well-read audience by comparison to a lot of similar sites. So don’t go changin’. 🙂 ]

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Fabbing becoming price-competitive

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Via Fabbaloo comes news that big businesses are starting to wake up to the savings they can make with 3D printing and rapid prototyping technology. Granted, this is a press release from a company that makes 3D printers, but the solid numbers that they’re quoting with respect to shoe giants Converse speak more loudly than the corporate back-patting:

Converse says its ZPrinters can produce a shoe model in two hours, or nearly 30 times faster than an ABS printer. ZPrinting has also helped:

  • Eliminate eight annual trips to Asia for design consultations at a cost of up to $12,000 per person for each trip;
  • Cut tooling costs from $350,000 in 2006 to $150,000 in 2008 by using ZPrinted models to winnow designs; and
  • Transform the way the company does business by bringing 3D shoe models to key accounts and producing models on demand.

“We’re seeing new prototypes in hours and cutting weeks off our design cycle,” said Bryan Cioffi, manager of digital product creation at Converse of N. Andover, Mass, USA. “Last night’s sketches become tangible color models that we can pass around at this morning’s meeting. Our ZPrinter has become a prototyping center in its own right, and it’s helping us get better products to market more quickly for less money.”

That technology is itself becoming cheaper by the month, so we can expect many other manufacturers to clamber aboard the fabbing train as they attempt to rebuild after the economic slump.

But that same capability may actually spell the doom of corporate giants like Converse. After all, when every town has a 3D print-shop, why pay Converse for a new pair of trainers that they’ve designed when you can just clone their basic design files from a torrent, make some unique tweaks and print out a custom sneaker of your own for a comparable (or perhaps even lower) price?

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The future is local: Braddock, Pennsylvania

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"We will grow" - the bridge to BraddockWe’ve been talking a fair bit about urban decline and decay, and efforts to repurpose collapsing cities.

Now, here’s an example of a dying town trying to go its own way – Braddock, Pennsylvania was once a flourishing steel town, home to Andrew Carnegie’s first free library. Now it has a population of under 2,500, and the axe of a proposed freeway hangs heavily over its neck. 2005 saw John Fetterman become Mayor, and he’s now working to bring “the kind of outside energy, ideas, and interest from the artistic, urbanist, and creative communities” to the town. [hat-tip to Justin Pickard; image by Hryck.]

In other words, if you’ve been reading along with Cory Doctorow’s serialised novel Makers over at Tor.com, or following Chairman Bruce‘s ongoing obsession with “stuffed animal” architecture and squatter culture, Fetterman’s plans will look pretty familiar. Whether Braddock can reinvent itself as a counter-cultural artist’s enclave remains to be seen, but you’ve got to salute the determination of a man willing to work at making it happen. When your government can’t (or won’t) help you, you’ve got to help yourself.

A loosely related story from Canada sees five Ontario grocery stores abandoning their franchisee status in favour of becoming a cooperative organisation that focusses on stocking the local produce that corporate policy previously prevented them from selling. Are we seeing the first trickles of a global landslide toward massive decentralisation, and a return to economies driven by community and proximity? [via MetaFilter]