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"in 1974 I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Nanofax | ||
| Send a copy of a three-dimensional object to a distant place. |
If you think that this sounds unlikely, you should understand that something like this already exists, and was in use for at least a few years before being described in the novel. It's called stereolithography, and it is used to create a three-dimensional plastic model from a three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) drawing. All you need is your CAD model and
Sound expensive? Read on.
| "Nanofax?" "Everything the name implies," says Klaus, "and considerably less." "What's that supposed to mean?" "Nanofax AG offers a technology that digitally reproduces objects, physically, at a distance. Within certain rather large limitations, of course. A child's doll, placed in a Lucky Dragon Nanofax unit in London, will be reproduced in the Lucky Dragon Nanofax unit in New York-" |
| Technovelgy from All Tomorrow's Parties,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1999 Additional resources -
|
Stereolithography (or a nanofax machine) is not likely to show up at your local convenience store anytime soon. The machines cost about $250,000 and the polymer is about $800 per gallon. Keep in mind, of course, that computers no more powerful than a $5 calculator once cost millions of dollars, and random access memory (RAM) that I once paid $600 for now costs one-half of one cent.
The commentary for dustmice discusses a very small robot that is partly fabricated using stereolithography.
Compare to the idea behind the cosmic express from The Cosmic Express (1930) by Jack Williamson and the plastic constructor from Things Pass By (1945) by Murray Leinster. Also, the Biltong life-forms from Pay for the Printer (1956) by Philip K. Dick are able to "3D print" an object organically. Don't forget the product prescription from The Magellanic Cloud (1955) by Stanislaw Lem.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from All Tomorrow's Parties
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to All Tomorrow's Parties
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Nanofax-related
news articles:
- Desktop Manufacturing - 3D 'Printouts'
- Mcor Matrix 3D Paper Printer
- Zprinter 350 Full-Color 3D Printer
- MGX 3D Printed Goods Almost Has it
- Artisanal 3D Printing By Martha Stewart
| Organic Non-Planar 3D Printing |
| Laser-Beam Welding In Orbital Factories |
| Varda Space Industries Orbital Factories |
| Boring Company Bricks Predicted In 1929 |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
