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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
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| Lithocule | ||
| Tiny intelligent building blocks. |
Lithocule literally means tiny stone; in this case, a tiny building block. It is not clear how they maneuver. In the book, uncounted numbers of these tiny parts are coming together in ocean shallows to create a new island.
| ...each lithocule knew exactly where it was supposed to go and what it was supposed to do. They were tetrahedral building blocks of calcium and carbon, the size of poppyseeds, each equipped with a power source, a brain and a navigational system. |
| Technovelgy from The Diamond Age,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam Books in 1995 Additional resources -
|
This is an interesting way to present a stereolithograph technology; in fact, it inverts the current technology completely. In standard stereolithography, the "smarts" are in the machine that has the design and control over where the particles settle to create the object. The polymer in the tank is "dumb" - it just deposits a solid bit when "told" to by the laser.
For more about stereolithography, see the entry for nanofax.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Diamond Age
More Ideas
and Technology by Neal Stephenson
Tech news articles related to The Diamond Age
Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson
Lithocule-related
news articles:
- Duroquinone Molecule Nano-Brain
| Omniphobic Liquid-like Surfaces And de Camp's Telelubricator (1940) |
| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
| Do We Still Need Orbiting Factories? |
| MIT Self-Assembling Reprogrammable Materials |
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'BY PUSHING AGAINST THE LITTLE MARTIAN MOON WITH OUR ROCKET SHIP, WE HAD LESSENED THE CENTRIFUGAL SPEED THAT HELD IT BALANCED IN THE SKY.'
'... he had tightened the chest to gain maximum pumping action from the motion of breathing.'
'...a prayer wheel swung into view and began spinning at a furious pace.'
'And are all the people willing to be governed by a machine?'
