Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 08:34:16 -0500 Poster: thornp2@rpi.edu Subject: Applications of nanotechnology (biosculpting) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Mark Slater wrote: >Why don't people post some of their ideas for redesigning ourselves >and the environment based on nanotechnology? First, we'll have the literature survey. :-) Well, you have the way-out ideas: --------------------------------- Moravec's "bush robots" people, where you look like a bush and your many limbs subdivide over and over into the nm realm (see _Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition_). The related transformation of Col. Adrik Thorsen in _Star Trek: Federation_ by Grigari nanomachines. Full body reshaping, into animals or such, as in Michael Flynn's _Nanotech Chronicles_. The slightly less way-out ideas: -------------------------------- People adapted for aquatic and vacuum living, changing sex, and cosmetic enhancements, as in Walter Jon William's _Aristoi_. Body Fashion Design o' The Week (non-MNT), in Charles Sheffield's _Proteus Unbound._ The not too way-out ideas: -------------------------- "Mediatronic tattoos," moving-picture body and hair paint, in Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_. And my ideas: ------------- Second thumb: move the pinky around to the side of the hand. Tools: retractable, embedded in the fingertips. MNT depilatories (and repilatories) for relocation/recoloring of hair. (Safe) melanin-stimulating cream (tanning). Related: skin color-changing (trigger the production of some other chemicals besides melanin). Fingernail growth control systems. Resculpt those poor abused squished toes into something presentable. Anti-bacteriological deoderant (or devices to soak up and break down their smelly waste products). Eyelash sculpting (so they don't fall off onto your eyeball or get stuck together). Lens enhancements: like contact lenses, only using controllable microthin fresnel lenses (there's been some research in this) and other things to give you "super-vision." Controllable fingertip suction cups (for picking up paper stuck to the desk). The whole range of computer and communications implants, including personal GPS, kid-trackers, and a personal belongings inventory: it doesn't matter if your house burns up, plans for all your things, and molecular records of your precious knicknacks, are carried with you everywhere. (For that matter, you wouldn't need to keep most of your toys in a closet. You just replicate them when necessary, then decompose them when you're done.) Enhanced thermal control: make your hair a radiator! (Your brain does use about 20% of your bloodsupply, I think, and you lose most heat through your head -- when it's hot, lose even more!) Hibernation inducers: if you're in trouble, go to sleep! If it'll be a long time, have those nanos vitrify your tissues and secrete a cyst to protect you from bugs and things. Emergency medical supplies: your head gets cut off. The pack (spread throughout your skull) stabilizes your brain. Or you get massive bleeding: it shuts down blood supply to that area temporarily, improves clotting, and grows a bandage over the wound. Wings: most useful in low-gravity habitats, or when skydiving. (If you entirely redesigned a person, with strong, lightweight diamond bones, improved muscle "cells," a LOT of muscle in the chest, and a hang-glider's worth of wing, you _might_ be able to fly in 1-G.) Internal rebreather: handy for snorkelers. Things to prevent nitrogen narcosis without tedious decompression stages: handy for deep divers. -- <---PHILLIP THORNE-----------------------------------------------------> < thornp2@rpi.edu "It's the boundary conditions > < http://www.rpi.edu/~thornp2 that get you." > < Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute * My opinions are my own. * > <======================================================================>