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"did I had an extremely expensive wife - she would see a new car that she liked and just buy it... under California law I was bound to buy her debts. I think I turned out 16 novels in five years."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| 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-" |
| 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.
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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
| Boring Company Bricks Predicted In 1929 |
| Is It Possible To GROW Planes And Vehicles? |
| Scaly-Foot Snail Works With Iron |
| Looms To Manually Weave Lunar Rover Wheels |
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'... the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'THE SPACE VESSEL was traveling swiftly… For over five thousand years they had Voyaged on and on.’
'They circled the vast audiences, dancing, twittering, chirping...'
'The sun-quilt was a patchwork of colors and materials on the inward side, but silvered on the outward side...'
'Jim, I saw them reduce four of my doctors and nurses into those little cubes!'
'Fats Jordan was hanging in the center of the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his guitar to his massive black belly above his purple shorts..'
'When confronted by hills, or rough terrain, it did not stop, but simply slowed until the task demanded equaled its steady power output.'
'... the brain is no longer subjected to the accustomed pull, and it expands slightly in all directions.'
