Technoprobing

FIREFIGHT EBOOK NOW AVAILABLE

2011-09-05T04:59:00.000-07:00

My novel FIREFIGHT is now available as an e-book (multiple platforms) from Naked Reader Press: http://nakedreader.com/storefront/index.php?route=product%2Fproduct&path=20_26&product_id=91 .

Could extreme environmentalists really blow up a nuclear power plant to save the environment?

"Tom Easton takes us around a few mind-bending curves in a thoughtful, and terrifying, tour through the near future, demonstrating that fanaticism in a good cause is still fanaticism. A dazzling, if unsettling, novel. And bring a hanky."
-- Jack McDevitt, author of the best-selling Chindi, Deepsix, and many more.

"A realistic near-future tale, very topical and worrisome, but ultimately about courage and hope. Written for grownups."
-- David Brin, author of the best-selling Uplift War series, Earth, The Postman, and much more.

"Mix one part Stephen King’s small town Maine landscapes, one part William Gibson’s virtual realities, and one part today’s headlines, and you have Tom Easton’s Firefight, a gritty, but ultimately hopeful tale of an all-too-possible tomorrow."
-- Robert A. Metzger, author of Picoverse.

THE GREAT FLYING SAUCER CONSPIRACY AVAILABLE!

2011-04-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Great Flying Saucer Conspiracy is now live at Naked Reader Press for a low, low $4.99. Click here!

NEW EBOOK THIS WEEK

2011-04-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

THE GREAT FLYING SAUCER CONSPIRACY. It's one of my favorites, and Naked Reader Press will be releasing it later this week. Click here for the preview.

Silicon Karma

2011-02-21T08:57:00.000-08:00

Speaking of e-books, Silicon Karma is already available for the Kindle. Click here. It first appeared in the late 90s from White Wolf Books and got some good comments:

"In SILICON KARMA, Tom Easton has convened a wry and riveting symposium on the mystery of death and the problem of 'the self and the brain.' Reading this novel is like opening a fortune cookie and finding not some vapid aphorism but a pithy insight into the nature of consciousness."
James Morrow, author of Blameless in Abaddon, etc.

"...an enjoyable read, a well told adventure story that held my interest throughout. It's a thought provoking glimpse into a possible future, well worth your time."
Hank Wagner, Science Fiction Reviews, March 1997

"... a fine novel, well told in the special language and traditions of science fiction."
Joe Mayhew, The Washington Post, May 25, 1997

"Just when you thought they didn't make 'em like that any more, Tom Easton proves you wrong. Silicon Karma is professionally crafted action/adventure..."
Bruce Canwell, Tomorrowsf, May-June 1997

"...highly entertaining novel ... a really good [book]. ... The world is richly worked out and detailed.... amusing, superior science fiction thinking.... Easton extrapolates cleverly and interestingly.... Very good fun."
Gahan Wilson, Realms of Fantasy, August 1997

On Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading list.

E-BOOKS COMING!

2010-12-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

Naked Reader Press has just agreed to release two of my older novels--The Great Flying Saucer Conspiracy (April) and Firefight (August)--as e-books in 2011. They'll do multiple formats--Kindle, iPad, Nook, etc.--and have them for sale in all suitable locations, as well as on their own site. What's more--no DRM!

CYBORG BUGS IN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

2010-11-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

Those Cyborg Bugs are back again! The December 2010 issue of Scientific American has a nice article, "Cyborg Beetles," by Michael M. Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato, on that they've achieved with the giant (8 grams, or a quarter ounce) Mecynorrhina forquata beetle.

Click here for the video.

Magnesium and the TSA

2010-11-23T18:12:00.000-08:00

I just reviewed Jack McDevitt's latest Alex Benedict novel, Echo (look for the review in December's SFRevu). In it, an ingenious device is used in an assassination attempt, and it occurs to me both that it would work nicely on an airplane and that the TSA wouldn't have a clue until well after the fact.

Picture an ornamental metal sculpture (a pagoda in the book) about the size of a long shoebox. It's filled with powdered magnesium, which when ignited combines with oxygen to make magnesium oxide. The shoebox sized unit holds enough magnesium to use up all the oxygen in a 40 cubic meter room, promptly suffocating anyone in the room. The interior of a jet is more than 40 cubic meters, so you'd need to have more than one of these gadgets. In action, removing the oxygen (20 percent of the air) would cause a pressure drop, triggering the release of oxygen masks, but I bet people would die anyway.

Hey, TSA! Are you ready for this?

Visions of Tomorrow

2010-10-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

A new book came out this summer from Skyhorse Publishing: Visions of Tomorrow: Science Fiction Predictions That Came True, edited by myself and Judith K. Dial. To get a copy, just go to Amazon.

Reviews so far--Publishers Weekly and Booklist--have been good, so we're happy.

Science fiction writers often try to remind people that they are in the business of entertainment, not prediction or prophecy, but the writers have gotten it right a few times. For example, Edgar Alan Poe successfully predicted--in the 1840s!-- trans-Atlantic travel by lighter-than-air craft, H. G. Wells predicted the military tank, and Murray Leinster predicted the Internet and even Google. The stories are in the book.

CYBORG BUGS ARE BACK AGAIN

2009-10-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

DARPA's HI-MEMS (Cyborg Bugs) project is making progress! According to New Scientist, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley,have implanted electronics into a giant African bug and achieved successful remote control of flight.

Scroll down in this blog to see why I feel more like a prophet than ever!

http://technoprobe.blogspot.com/2009/01/cyborg-bugs-revisited.html
http://technoprobe.blogspot.com/2007/10/cyborg-insects-and-my-fifteen-minutes.html

A CLOUD FOR MANUFACTURING

2009-09-28T03:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve just heard from an interesting outfit—CloudFab—that promises to hook up folks who have designs but no manufacturing capability (meaning 3D printers and the like) with manufacturing shops with spare time available on their machines.

There’s a need for such services, at least among small businesses whose people have the design skills to generate CAD/CAM files. Some hobbyists fit that description, but even though I think 3D printers will be in every home in a few years, I don’t think very many people will be generating CAD/CAM files.

They’ll be downloading them and printing them. And one big business opportunity will lie with generating, customizing, tweaking, and selling those files. Ponoko is reportedly doing something along these lines with a nascent partnership--100kgarages--with ShopBot, makers of inexpensive computer-controlled routers. “The idea is that designers (or shoppers) on Ponoko who find a great design now have the option of having the item built locally by any one of (eventually) 100,000 garages equipped with ShopBot tooling.”

So where does that put CloudFab? They say they are “all about increasing access to fabbing technology.“

“We aggregate many shops together to expand the process types available. In the beginning, we're concentrating on all 3D printing processes (FDM, SLA, ZCorp, PolyJet/ProJet, SLS/M,and more), but more process types, like laser cutting/etching, will become available soon.

“Our system gives you quotes from multiple shops on the system - like Kayak.com does for travel deals. All you have to do is upload an STL file, pick which process and material you'd like, and our system sends every applicable seller an RFQ. The sellers then quote you back, and you get to pick the quote that fits you best. After the parts are shipped, the buyer leaves feedback - or they can move into arbitration if the parts aren't up to snuff.

“So far, we've found that we've saved customers about 50% by using the spare capacity that all job shops have plenty of. Often our sellers are willing to give us this surplus nearly at cost. Also, with enough demand, sellers make multiple parts per build which decreases part cost even more by reducing applied finance costs.

“It's not always about price though, most industrial designers we talk to prefer turnaround time and quality over low pricing. If you talk to hobbyists though, they'll put up with a lot for cheap parts. For ultra cheap printing, we're encouraging the MakerBot / RepRap community to sign up as sellers to serve the hobbyist market.”

At this early stage in the development of consumer-grade 3D printing technology, there is a need for this technology. But as 3D printers become more capable and affordable and penetrate the home market, there will be less and less need to send design files elsewhere for printing. If CloudFab wants to stay in business more than a decade, it is going to have to invert its business model. Right now the premise is that designs are all over the place and need to find printers. Once printers are all over the place, the problem will be finding files to print. There will be a niche for a brokerage service that helps people do that. Right now, it looks like Ponoko is setting itself up to be that broker, though once 3D printing is in every home, there will be little need for 100kgarages. The cloud will be a lot bigger than that, and it won’t be “out there” somewhere. It’ll be in the family room.

HOPE FOR THE SUB-5,000 3D PRINTER

2009-09-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

The latest word on Desktop Factory is that the company's buyer is 3D Systems, "the leadership brand in the Additive Manufacturing industry, which means that they have the resources and desire to deliver on the promise of a truly low cost, easy to use 3-D printer."

3D Systems has acquired Desktop Factory's key assets--meaning intellectual property, know-how, tools, and even the core team of remaining Desktop Factory employees.

Abe Reichental, CEO of 3D Systems, says:

Until recently, cost and complexity have confined 3-D Printers to the shops and design departments of major corporations and premier design firms. The growing success and acceptance of V-Flash®, our first sub-$10,000 compact desktop 3-D Printer, reaffirms our commitment to one day make 3-D Printing as common in offices, factories, schools and homes as 2-D printers are today. We believe that the technology already developed by Desktop Factory in combination with our extensive technology portfolio should lead to a new generation of fast, simple and affordable 3-D Printers capable of making durable plastic parts.

We want to keep this exciting conversation going. The ability to design, create and produce models and prototypes — on your desktop, within a few hours — should be available to all. Our global economy runs on innovation, and we intend to provide the necessary 3-D printing tools to help you succeed independent of the size of your company and budget or your design challenges. You can count on our commitment to affordable 3-D printers — starting with V-Flash® today and even more affordable 3-D printers in the future.

In the coming weeks we will announce our formal communication strategy and invite you to participate with us as we seek your input and ongoing support. We are very excited about the potential before us and look forward to delivering an even wider choice of affordable, accessible 3-D printing technologies.

So don't give up hope. Affordable consumer-grade 3D printing is still on track.

DESKTOP FACTORY GONE?

2009-08-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

If you've been following this blog, irregular though it be, you know I've had a good deal to say about 3D printing. I've had a lot to say elsewhere as well, and at the World Science Fiction in Montreal last week, I gave two talks. There were other talks on the topic as well, just to show that there's a lot of interest in the topic.

Unfortunately, the economy isn't helping. A few months ago, Desktop Factory announced that they were running short on venture capital and having trouble finding more. Plans to move out of beta were on hold.

Now they report that they had to bite the bullet and look for a buyer for the company. Fortunately:

"a funny thing happened as we launched our effort to sell Desktop Factory. We found interested parties who do understand the exciting potential for this breakthrough technology. We found companies that value the industry and can visualize the myriad applications for this affordable printer. Most important, we have found organizations that engage with customers and truly want to be a part of this next major wave in additive fabrication.

"And, along the way we have found the best opportunity to place the assets, the intellectual property and many of our people with a leadership brand; a company with the resources and the desire to deliver on the promise of a truly low cost, easy to use 3D printer. We are cautiously optimistic that we can successfully conclude this sale of Desktop Factory within the next 30 days."

Meanwhile they are refunding the deposits already paid by eager buyers.

They're not saying who the buyer is, just that "We look forward to sharing the complete back story with you on the new owner and how they will continue to keep this exciting conversation going."

If you're as optimistic about this technology as I am, keep an eye out for that new owner. If they're a public company, their stock may be worth a look.

THE SF PROPHET STRIKES AGAIN!

2009-04-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

Slashdot has just posted a great story:

"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York is developing flexible nanotubes inserted under the skin to create a handheld display — inside your hand. They wirelessly receive data and display reminders and text messages, and the concept has also been broadened to suggest endlessly programmable digital tattoos, while Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics is also exploring the concept of the body as 'a platform for electronics and interactive skin technologies'."

Much to my delight, a few years ago I wrote a story that forecast almost exactly this! Is science fiction supposed to try to forecast the future? That question has provoked a lot of debate over the years. I’m inclined to say “yes.” If you’re not, don’t argue. Just enjoy!

HACKING THE SKIN TRADE

Thomas A. Easton

"Give me that, you little bastard!"
Molly had spent an hour carefully copying a bold black and red geometric pattern from a magazine page taped to her mirror. The dark hair that framed her face made the design even more dramatic. But now Tony-J had the toowand. He was holding it like a sword, en garde with Molly's nose above her plate.
"Hah!" He slashed the toowand in the air, and a stripe of iridescent green toobits appeared across her nose and cheek.
"Give!" Molly lunged at her brother and a milk carton went flying off the table.
"Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!" But as Tony-J threw himself backward, his hand went up in the air. His father, Tony Scarpatti, grabbed the toowand before it could do any more damage.
"Antonio Junior!" His mother, Dinah, took the toowand from her husband and said. "You clean up the milk."
He knew better than to argue with that tone of voice, but he couldn't help muttering, "Call me Scar."
Then Dinah handed the toowand back to Molly. "Go get that straightened out. And hurry, or you'll miss the bus."
Tony finished his coffee and sighed. "I can go by the high school."
"What about me?" said Tony-J from the floor, still mopping up milk.
His mother laughed. "You miss your bus, you walk."
Not that the middle school was really that far away. And not that she couldn't go by it on her way to work. But the kid had to learn: You screw up, you pay.

Ben Yugato must have been waiting for Tony. As soon as he unlocked his office door, Ben was right there, crowding in behind him with his belly and his mint-soaked breath and his musky cologne, saying, "Got something new here, Tony boy."
"What, boss?" He set the laptop case on the desk, took out his machine, set it where it wouldn't block the view of his family photo cube, plugged it in, hit the button. The office was small, barely big enough to warrant a door, and windowless. One wall bore shelves of reference books, software manuals, and the DVD records of all the ad campaigns he'd worked on. Another bore a few stills and a faded travel poster. Paris, where he and Dinah had wanted to go for their honeymoon. They had gone to Connecticut instead, a long weekend instead of two weeks. They had both had project deadlines.
Ben set a PDA in front of him. But not quite a PDA--a black cylinder the size and shape of a cigar stuck out of one end. Tony turned it over. Standard PDA screen but no keyboard-projection lens. "No keyboard is new? Where'd you get this?"
"One of our clients, PowerToo. It's a prototype. Old components." Ben touched a button, and a panel slid aside to reveal a miniature keyboard. Tony remembered when and grimaced. "Except for this." Ben touched the cigar.
"Pretty clunky for Wi-Fi."
"Different frequency band. Everyone's got toobits now, right? Go down to the drugstore and they spray 'em into your skin. Face, back, arms, legs, wherever. Then they sell you a toowand so you can draw whatever toos you want." The toobits were nanomotes only slightly larger than bacteria, tiny versions of radio-frequency ID chips with quantum dots for color. The wand was a wireless projector that told the chips which dots to activate.
"God, yes." He didn't have to explain. Ben had kids too.
"Most people don't realize the toobits are networked. But that's how they get color shades. And how they keep the edges of the toos clean. Not like old-time tattoos. And this..." He touched a button on the device. A red rose bloomed on the back of his hand.
Tony grinned. "The whole pattern at once."
Another button. The rose vanished. "Undo." Another, and it was back. "Redo."
And wouldn't Molly love that! No chance of missing the bus when Tony-J messed up her makeup.
Now Ben was backing across the office. "Hit it."
Undo. Redo.
"Longer range. See? It's a PowerWand. And I'm thinking of the beach. All that skin, like a thousand billboards."
"Ads?" He was horrified. "They will hang you from a lamppost."
Ben winked and laughed. "Not me. Maybe whoever bites when we sell 'em the ad. And that's your job now."
"What do you mean? I've got ..." Tony gestured at his laptop. He had clients, campaigns...
"Turn everything over to Janice. I want you to come up with something that will use this gadget. Something we can pitch to clients." Ben grinned. Waved. Said, "Take it home and play with it." And vanished, leaving the PowerWand on Tony's desk.
He stared at it for the next hour.
The PowerWand was a nice gadget, a nifty gadget. Molly would love it. The maker wouldn't be able to keep up with the cosmetics demand.
But ads? Popping up on people's skins?
What kind of a sleazy son-of-a-bitch would even think of such a thing?
People would remember telemarketers fondly. They would declare them saints of restraint.
Maybe spammers too.
And if they ever found out who had started it... It wouldn't be Ben who would swing. He was too savvy, he'd just point at Tony, and then...
Jesus!
If only he didn't have a mortgage, two cars, a couple of college educations to save for... Dinah made good money, but not enough. He couldn't just say no. That wasn't how this business worked. He'd be on the street, and someone else would be only too happy to take the credit for this little gig.
Ben knew him too damned well. Figured he couldn't say no. And he was right, damn him. Sneaky, slimy bastard.
He swore. He stared. He thought of sports stars who showed plenty of skin. Boxers, swimmers. Legs on runners, basketball players. Cover 'em with logos like NASCAR cars. That would work. But it wasn't the beach. He swore again. Finally, he got down to work. Copied his work files to Janice. Attended a couple of meetings. Took Janice to lunch with the biggest of his clients, introduced her, said something about a big new project, new media, hottest thing since Super Bowl slots, the client would be the first to have a shot at it. Went back to the office, took a couple of ibuprofen, and thought, "God help me." He knew what he was going to do, what he had to do. He didn't like it, but he already had a few ideas.
The PowerWand went into the case with his laptop.

Molly knew the drill. Every night her Dad had to spend a couple of hours with the laptop, but not in any den. Big fat recliner, TV mouths running off about news, politics, sports, teenage mouths yah-yah-yahing. So she grabbed the case as soon as he walked in the door, took it to the table by the recliner, set up the machine. By the time he got back with his Sam Adams, Tony-J had the PowerWand in his hands.
"What's this?"
"A new toowand."
The kid laughed and waved it toward his sister. She batted him away. "What's new about it?"
Tony held out his hand and smiled when Tony-J obediently handed it to him. "You can program a whole design. From a distance. Though I haven't had it long enough to figure out exactly how."
"Can I try?"
"Me first, kid. It's work."
"And then me? Is that a promise?" The kid looked downright eager, and Tony was sure it wouldn't take him long at all. Might even save time to let him at it. But...
"We'll see. Like I said, it's work. It goes to the office with me, and it might not come back right away."
"Huh," and Tony-J eyed his sister, who said, "No way."
Tony laughed. "Don't worry, Molly. It's got an undo button if he tags you with it."
Later, while the kids were doing homework, playing video games, chatting with friends, bickering as usual, Tony pulled up the PowerWand's specs. 500-foot range. Addressable toos, send them anywhere a target had toobits, hand, arm, back, butt even. Nifty interface--3D manikin on the tiny screen, rotate it, set the crosshairs, click OK. Notes on how wide-open skin-nets were, no encryption, no passwords, no need that anyone had ever thought of. He shook his head. That wouldn't last. But for now, all a user needed was a port scanner to find a local skin-net, and that was built right in. All you had to do was aim. The manikin even showed you where the toobits were.
He played with the controls. Used his laptop to store an image of Dinah on its memory card, tried impressing that on the toobits in his arm. Grainy, but...
"Wow, Dad. Can I try?"
He looked at his son. Held up his arm. "This is the only place I've got toobits, Tony-J. What about you?"
"Ah..." Hesitation, an almost visible squirm. Toobits in places he didn't want his parents knowing. Tony tried hard not to laugh, couldn't help the smile.
"Your back?"
"Yeah." Tony-J's grin seemed relieved.
"Then take off your shirt." A moment later he was nodding. Much better with more skin.
"You can't leave him like that!" Dinah sounded horrified.
Molly just laughed. "Think what the other kids would say. 'Mommy on your back all the time?'"
"We can't have that!" Tony laughed and pushed the undo button, but as the image vanished, Tony-J yelled, "Hey! I want to see!"
Redo. "You know where the mirrors are."
A moment later, from the bathroom: "Wow. This thing makes killer toos. You could have anything!"
Undo again. Tell the kid no, he couldn't borrow the PowerWand. Test the regular wand to make sure it can erase the Dinah on his arm, and tell Molly yes, he'll use it to put a fleur de lis on her cheek. Tell Tony-J yes, he can have a dragon on his arm. The gizmo has both in its clip art folder.
Then back to thinking. Killer toos indeed, as long as he gave each image a patch of skin big enough for decent resolution. Logos could go anywhere. He laughed at the thought of a Studley's Gym ad decorating some beach-going slob's swollen paunch. A condom ad on a pregnant woman with six brats in tow.
Not exactly winners, he thought. Time to hang it up.

"Hey, Scar!"
"Ubori! Khan!"
Three buddies, one for all, all for one, all in trouble together.
"Whatcha got there?"
"Dad brought it home last night. A super toowand!"
"Super, huh. What's it do?"
"Whole pics. See?" He'd found the rose image while he was still on the bus. He held up the palm of his hand.
"A flower? C'mon."
"You like my dragon better?"
"Yeah!"
"That must have taken hours!"
"Nah." Tony-J snapped his fingers. "Like that. It even works long-distance." A moment later both Khan and Ubori wore roses on their foreheads. Then he had to show them the undo feature.
"Can you buy these things?"
"Not yet."
"Then lemme have it."
Scar yanked it out of Khan's reach. "If I don't take it back tonight..."
The others nodded, reluctantly. They understood.
"But we can play with it today?"
"Unless Dad shows up with the cops."
Ubori laughed. "We can put spiders on people. Roaches. Snakes. Dripping blood."
Khan giggled. "And I know who..."
"We ownЗ them!"

This morning Tony had time to get into the office and open his laptop case before Ben Yugato showed up. But he was still staring blankly at the empty space beside his laptop when his boss's hand landed on his shoulder.
"What's the matter?"
"It isn't there." No point in trying to hide the truth.
"What? The PowerWand?"
Tony nodded. "I know I put it in here last night." He pointed. "After I got it figured out."
"You got kids, right?"
Tony nodded again.
"Then we know where it is. One of 'em snuck it, and he'll bring it home tonight."
Tony-J, of course. No wonder he had seemed in such a rush to get to school. "He'd better."
"Tomorrow, then. I've got kids too, you know." Ben laughed, looked surprisingly satisfied. "Amazing, isn't it, how you can count on 'em to mess you up?"
Yeah. Had Ben taken the PowerWand home himself? Not likely, and Tony's laugh wasn't as jovial. He felt uneasy, suspicious, though he could not quite say why. The missing PowerWand was his own damned fault. He should have a den, or a lock on his case, or he should have left the thing in the office, no matter that the boss had told him to take it home for the night and play with it.
"It's not a problem, Tony. It'll work out. Now, have you come up with anything yet?"
"Nothing I like much. Though I do have one that would keep us out of trouble. No invasion of privacy."
"What's that?"
"Do a NASCAR number on athletes. Logos on their skin."
Ben shook his head. "They'd want to be paid. Think beach, Tony. Lots of skin. Free skin."
"Just let the too folks sell it, Ben. My daughter drooled all over it. It could do animated toos if you wore it like a pager. A watch in your skin."
"Too obvious, and they're on that already. Think beach, Tony. We want ads. We want eyeballs."
Tony shook his head. "They will shut us down so fast. Legislation, security in the toobits."
"But we'll get attention, won't we? Lots of it."
And that was the name of the game. Why skin shows and Super Bowls carried the most expensive advertising. They had the eyeballs.
"Maybe we should just advertise the gadget itself. ''Are we bugging you? Get your PowerToo PowerWand now and turn us off!'"
Ben gave him a dirty look. He wasn't being a good team player. "Maybe. It could work. But first the ads. Come up with something. Don't be negative."
As soon as Tony was alone, he sighed. Or else, eh?
Looking for inspiration, he pulled up a list of the agency's clients. Cars, perfumes, clothes, real estate agencies... Jolly Laszlo's Seafood Haven. He imagined swimmers suddenly sporting toos of various fish as they emerged from the water. Squid, lobster, snapper, trout, striper, bluefish, tuna, shark, shrimp, sole... A beat, two, three, just long enough for everyone to say "What the hell...?" Then the skin goes bare, and "It's just as fresh at Laszlo's" pops up on backs and bellies.
Could it do that? The PowerWand had a 500-foot range. Would water interfere? Could it do simultaneous images on multiple hides? Not his department. He had a nifty here, now all he had to do was write it up, generate a quick animation, and send it to Ben.
He was almost done when the phone rang.

Ben's office was twice the size of Tony's. The carpet was a thick Isfahan. The walls were covered with ads--magazine pages, stills, even loops on flat panel displays--and the awards they'd won. The broad, polished maple desk was dominated by a 20-inch monitor displaying a page of text.
"Ben? We got trouble."
"What?"
"I just had a call from a reporter. My son's expelled, he's being charged with assault, and the school confiscated the PowerWand."
"What the hell did he do? And how did it get out?"
"He picked on the reporter's kid. She's phobic about spiders, and..."
"Oh, God." But Ben Yugato was grinning like a cat who had just scored a canary.
Tony didn't notice. He was looking at the carpet. "Damned stupid kid."
"Don't worry about the gizmo." Ben pointed at a small table by the window. Two more flanked a vase of lilies.
"You aren't going to get a chance to use it for ads." And neither he nor Tony would be attacked for invading privacy. Just Tony Junior, stupid kid, idiot kid.
"That's okay. See this?"
The monitor, the text. Tony moved close enough to read it: A press release. Denying blame. "We were testing the Powerwand and brainstorming publicity approaches. Unfortunately, a security lapse let [name] 'borrow' the prototype. We regret the consequences. Obviously measures will have to be taken to prevent misuse of the product...."
Tony abruptly swung to face his boss. "You expected this."
Ben nodded. "As soon as you told me it was gone."
"You set me up. You set him up!"
Ben just looked at him, as if to say that of course he had. Of course the ads had been just a pretext. The point was publicity, eyeballs, no matter how.
"I'll talk to PowerToo. If this works out--and it should--they'll cover the lawyer. And your kid's a minor. He'll get a slap on the wrist. That's all."
"But..." But Tony could only shake his head as helpless tears filled his eyes. He wanted to shout and scream. Do something violent.
"You want the account? It'll be an easy sell, and plenty of billings. But you may have to play lobbyist too."
He could do that. He really could.
Or he could just plain quit. Right now.
Couldn't he?
###

NEW BOOKS

2009-04-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Way back in 1997 I published Silicon Karma, about life for downloaded people, with White Wolf Books. It garnered some nice reviews (including a lovely one from cartoonist Gahan Wilson--he loved it), sold a few copies, and went out of print in due course, whereupon I bought a hundred copies of the remaining stock. The rights reverted.

In 1995 an earlier version appeared in electronic form from Serendipity Systems. I recently got those rights back as well, and I've just converted the original manuscript file, packaged with a background essay and a short story, into modern ebook formats--Mobipocket prc, Sony lrf, and epub, using Calibre--and uploaded as well to Amazon's Kindle store, where you can buy Silicon Karma just by clicking from your Net-empowered Kindle.

This is my first attempt, so if you buy a copy, let me know if and how well it works for you. If there are problems, I'll try to fix them and then send you a Kindle-compatible file (Mobipocket should work).

If all is well, I'll do another book or two. Serendipity also published a collection of essays, short stories, and poems called Frontiers of Wonder, and that's a candidate. So is Maine Quartet, a four-story chapbook coming this summer from SRM Publisher, which mostly publishes material by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee, quite popular for their Liaden Universe series (SRM also brings out material by other writers such as Lawrence M. Schoen). Steve says the electronic rights for this chapbook remain mine and he's cool with me Kindle-izing (is that a word?) it.

CYBORG BUGS REVISITED

2009-01-30T04:56:00.000-08:00

Remember the HI-MEMS project I almost got involved with a year and a half ago? It's back, with a wirelessly controlled beetle. According to Technology Review, University of California at Berkeley researchers Michael Maharbiz and his colleagues have "developed a tiny rig that receives control signals from a nearby computer. Electrical signals delivered via the electrodes command the insect to take off, turn left or right, or hover in midflight. The research, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), could one day be used for surveillance purposes or for search-and-rescue missions."

I can't claim any credit but as a science fiction writer I'm allowed to be delighted when one of my concepts comes true twenty years later. If you've read Sparrowhawk, you know what I mean. (For a new copy, click here.)

WEIRD SCIENCE

2009-01-13T19:10:00.001-08:00

I've just finished reading Gregory L. Reece, Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs: Mysterious Creatures, Lost Worlds and Amazing Inventions, I. B. Tauris (distributed by Palgrave Macmillan), $18.95, 238 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-84511-756-6).

Reece has dug up everything he can find on Bigfoot, Nessy, Atlantis and Mu, Hollow Earth, chupacabras, channeling aliens on Venus, the Shaver mystery, free energy, and a great deal more. He has attended conventions where folks who believe in this stuff--or who at least say they do--gather. And he has pulled it together in a unique "celebration" of intellectual diversity, illustrated with stills from sci-fi movies and the like. It all "reminds us that what counts as evidence differs from context to context. Likewise, what is real."

I think he's just being polite. He recognizes that mainstream intellectuals think this stuff is pure bunkum. There are a few "maybes" out there, perhaps, but most of what he parades for our delectation and astonishment is so far beyond what the facts support that even Hollywood can't touch it with a straight face.

You, of course, don't need to keep a straight face while reading the book. In fact, you probably can't for there is humor here, albeit the thoroughly out-of-fashion humor of the carnival freak-show.

Yeah, I'm not as polite as Reece is.

THE DESIGN ECONOMY

2008-12-08T11:08:00.001-08:00

My article on the coming Design Economy is now out in the January-February issue of The Futurist. They sent me a pdf and said I could put it on my website, so I did. Click here for the website and here for the pdf.

A COMING BLOW FOR STATE BUDGETS

2008-11-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

The December 2008 issue of State Legislatures magazine quotes some of my projections about possible future impacts of 3D printing on state budgets. Here is the long version of those projections, taken from my work in progress, The 3D Printing Revolution: Social and Economic Impacts.

State budgets are still reeling from the impact of the personal computer, the Internet, and e-commerce and the federal moratorium on taxing Internet sales and services. Attempts to make sales taxes more uniform from state to state and to revise legislation to make those taxes more collectable may help. But there’s a new computer-related impact on sales taxes that will be more difficult to cope with.

The average state meets about a third of its revenue needs from sales taxes. In 2007, Sami Dakhlia of the University of Southern Mississippi and Robert P. Strauss of Carnegie-Mellon University (“Should Sales Taxes Be Imposed on E-Commerce?” August 12, 2007, available from the Social Science Research Network, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1006880) found that about a fifth of sales tax revenues are potentially threatened by untaxed e-commerce sales. In November 2007, Florida said $2 billion of its $3.4 billion budget shortfall is due to uncollected e-commerce sales taxes. In 2008, with the national economy pinched by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry and ensuing foreclosure crisis, and by rising oil prices, many states found themselves struggling with budget shortfalls. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, even before the current financial meltdown, half the U.S. states were facing budget shortfalls for fiscal year 2009. Amounts varied from $59 million (Vermont) to $16 billion (California), with the total topping $40 billion. Consequences are expected to include increases in other taxes, including income taxes, and cuts in services such as public health, education, and even highway maintenance.

How bad is the problem, really? It’s hard to say, but e-commerce has grown tremendously in the last few years. In the worst case, according to Dakhlia and Strauss, sales tax revenues will drop by 20 percent. Since sales taxes provide a third of state budgets, those budgets will take a seven percent hit even as demands for government expenditures increase. Consequences for services and infrastructure maintenance, already visible, will grow worse until other taxes are imposed.

The bad news does not stop with e-commerce. A new technology is now moving from industry to the home with the potential to reduce sales tax revenue much more. With e-commerce, the transactions exist to be taxed. With this new technology—3D printing--they do not.

3D printing is also known as rapid-prototyping or fabbing. It can be used to make replacement parts for appliances, a new head (or leg) for a broken doll, a specially shaped piece for a hobby project, decorative switch plates, coat hooks, children’s sandals, or a thousand other items. Once consumers have 3D printers, they will have a China on their desktop, and they won’t be spending nearly as much money at the local hardware store or Wal-Mart.

One of the new machines is the Desktop Factory, priced at just under $5,000 (compared to $20,000 for the cheapest of the machines available just two years ago). It works by building objects one layer at a time (like a deli meat slicer in reverse) out of plastic powder fused by intense light. The machine easily fits on a desktop and weighs less than 90 lbs. It can make things up to 5 inches on a side with layers a hundredth of an inch thick, slightly thicker than those laid down by the industrial machines.

The technology, according to its proponents, is about where the personal computer was in the mid-1970s. The personal computer took about two decades to create the Internet and e-commerce revolution. It seems a reasonable extrapolation that the 3D printer will have a similar impact, perhaps in less time. Indeed, the people behind the Desktop Factory say their goal "is to one day make 3D printing as common in offices, factories, schools and homes as laser printers are today. Just as desktop publishing exploded as prices dropped and laser printers became ubiquitous, so too will new uses for 3D printing emerge as devices become inexpensive and widely available."

If that goal is achieved, consumers will be happy. But government runs on taxes. If a manufacturer goes out of business because its erstwhile customers are printing instead of buying, it no longer pays corporate income taxes, and its employees no longer pay personal income taxes. If the company goes bankrupt, even property taxes may be lost. Meanwhile, those same erstwhile customers are no longer buying gasoline to drive to the store.

We do not yet have a clear idea of what proportion of total sales might be displaced by home 3D printing, nor of how those displaced sales will split between e-commerce and “bricks-and-mortar” commerce. But it is surely safe to say that there will be such a split and that therefore home 3D printing will increase the loss of sales tax revenues above what is already being experienced. The blow to state and national budgets could easily surpass ten percent, and with the added impact of lost corporate and personal income taxes, property taxes, and gas taxes the blow could be much greater. Exactly how bad the blow will be is impossible to tell at this point, but it seems realistic to say that it will be worse than the impact of e-commerce alone.

If state revenue is reduced by any significant amount, there will be effects in many areas--education, human services, health care, highway maintenance, law enforcement, and more. States may be reluctant to raise taxes, but their needs will not go away. If the shortfalls do not prove to be temporary, taxes will have to go up.

The question is which taxes. Since the single largest state revenue source is personal income taxes, that may seem the obvious choice, though it would not be a popular one. New taxes on 3D printers and the raw materials they require are another option, but under development is an open-source printer (the RepRap project) that will be capable of printing itself and will use multiple materials that could be prepared at home. The tax potential may be limited. A more likely solution may be licensing possession and use of 3D printers, with licensing fees taking the place of actual taxes.

Further down the road, we do have to worry about expansions of the individual citizen’s ability to make whatever he or she needs at home. In fact, we are likely to see that ability increasing year by year, with purchases of goods other than groceries, appliances, houses, and vehicles declining year by year. The result could be a shrinking national and even global economy. Since we are accustomed to a growing economy, generating predictable returns on investment, producing more goods for consumers who every year buy more and more and pay more and more sales taxes, and providing ever more jobs, this will be a serious matter.

The future is difficult to predict with any certainty. But the technology of 3D printing is developing rapidly, and its impacts may be large. It’s too early to panic, but it is not too early to start the conversation about what this technology may mean for state government.

WHO'S TO BLAME?

2008-11-26T17:56:00.000-08:00

With collapse of the nation's financial system on everyone's minds, we'd all like to know who to blame. The nominees include the Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration, deregulation, and quants.

What are quants? They are also known as financial engineers or quantitative analysts, and they've been around for quite awhile. But in the 1990s, headhunters started looking for quants at major research labs, where physicists and mathematicians were feeling the pinch of canceled programs such as the Superconducting Supercollider (cancelled in 1993). There were, frankly, too many physicists and mathematicians chasing too few jobs in their fields. Many were open to other ways of making a living.

According to Alaina G. Levine, "Science Careers: Finance's Quant(um) Mechanics," Science, November 21, 2008, we need more math whizzes in the finance sector, not fewer. But some don't agree, as Steve Hsu, Professor of physics at the University of Oregon, noted over a year ago. If they're right, the real fault for our current crisis must lie with whatever put so many quants on Wall Street, and that would seem to be the lack of federal support for physics research.

It happened on President Clinton's watch, but it was Congress that cut the purse-strings in 1993. The International Space Station was demanding funds, and the feeling was that the nation just could not afford the Supercollider.

Maybe what we really can't afford is letting the quants out of the physics labs. Don't cut the funding!

REVIEW--JETPACK DREAMS

2008-11-16T17:54:00.000-08:00

Mac Montandan, Jetpack Dreams: One Man’s Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention that Never Was, Da Capo Press, $25, 261 pp. (IBSN: 978-0-306-81528-7).

The jetpack—a rocket strapped to a person’s back so they could swoop around the sky—first appeared in the August 1928 Amazing Stories, in the very first installment of the Buck Rogers franchise (Philip Francis Nolan’s “Armageddon 2419 A.D.”). Until the 1950s, its realm was solely science fiction, but in the 50s, thanks to several inspired engineers, it became real. Unfortunately, it never was able to put someone in the air for more than 21 seconds. That was enough for brief but crowd-pleasing demonstration flights at the World Fair, the Olympics, and elsewhere. But Buck Rogers? No way!

Not that no one else tried. Mac Montandan does an excellent job in Jetpack Dreams of showing how those demo flights grabbed the imaginations of a fair number of obsessive tinkerers. Some actually managed to build working jetpacks. Some crashed and burned. Some got tangled in scandal and even murder. And they’re still tinkering.

The Where’s My Jetpack? question has become a clicheed way of asking what happened to the future we were promised in the 50s. It's even the title of a different book on the subject: Daniel H. Wilson's Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived. We didn’t get the jetpacks, nor the flying cars (though DARPA wants them now), nuclear-powered cars, electricity too cheap to meter, large manned space stations, and many other well-hyped futuristic visions. But as Montandan shows, the jetpack in particular was never truly practical. It takes fuel to move weight into the air, and one person can only carry in a backpack enough fuel for a few seconds of flight. Lacking antigravity, swooping around the sky like Superman just ain’t in the cards.

Or is it? Remember that weight is the problem, and in space—in orbit—there is no weight. Jetpacks would work fine there, and in fact, NASA had astronauts doing extravehicular activity using a pressurized gas jetpack (the Manned Maneuvering Unit) on three missions in 1984. More recently NASA has relied on a smaller, simpler backpack propulsion system called the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER). Unfortunately, Montandan never mentions these devices at all, nor of course the possibility that the time for jetpack swooping just hasn’t arrived yet, and won’t till we can live in orbit.

THE LEAVES HAVE FALLEN, AND YOU CAN SEE...

2008-10-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

My morning ride to work covers 36 miles of country roads in 40-45 minutes with just three stop signs and two lights. I see farm fields, woods, ospreys, eagles, deer, and the occasional moose. It's a lovely trip through spring and summer, and in the fall, for awhile, the changing leaves add a glorious splash of color. But when the leaves depart the trees, you can see things that were hidden all the rest of the year. For instance, driving through Knox the other day, I noticed a flash of blue and white off to my left, down a gravel drive. I stopped and peered through the bare branches to see a house of quite intriguing shape:

The core appears to be a geodesic dome, but windows and doors have been added to achieve a very futuristic look. What do you think?

That's not the only thing that has been entertaining me on my drive. The town of Freedom has been warring for the last couple of years over whether to permit a trio of windmills to be installed. The windmills won, and they started turning this week.

They look elegant to me, but then I'm very much an environmentalist. Anything that reduces fossil fuel use is good. Opponents claim they're noisy, but considering how many people live next to noisy highways in this country, they can suck it up. I'd like to see a lot more windmills, both offshore and on every high point of land where there's enough wind for them to work. And they don't have to replace oil. This fall we're seeing the prices of heating oil and gasoline dropping rapidly because high prices, coupled with the financial melt-down, have reduced demand. Windmills, if they just reduce oil use, also reduce demand for oil. And reducing demand helps keep oil and gas prices low. That is, if you want affordable heating oil and gasoline, push wind every chance you get.

Of course, with enough wind power and other alternative sources of electricity, plug-in hybrids become the way to go. Or even all-electric cars.

CREATING BUZZ FOR 3D PRINTING

2008-09-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

I keep talking about the work I'm doing on the 3D printing book. It continues, and I'm getting a few magazine and Web publications out of it. Just this afternoon, "In Crimes to Come" went live at TechRevu. I tapped my LinkedIn network by asking what people thought 3D printers would make possible for future crimes, and several of the respondents are mentioned here.

There's also "The 3D Trainwreck" in the November Analog and “The design economy: A brave new world for businesses and consumers," coming up in the January-February 2009 Futurist. You can also look for "A recession in the economy of trust," in G. R. Ricci, ed., "Values and Technology," Religion & Public Life, vol. 37 (Transaction Publishers, 2009). I'm waiting to hear on a couple more items.

Energy and Society

2008-09-01T15:23:00.001-07:00

A little while ago, I announced here that McGraw-Hill had just agreed to do my text anthology Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Energy and Society. The entry is now live on their website (though all the pieces aren't there yet), allowing teachers to request complimentary copies and anyone to look at the table of contents (soon!) or even to order a copy.

I have high hopes for this one. The topic couldn't be hotter!

GUSTAV AND MARKETING

2008-08-31T05:30:00.000-07:00

One of the textbooks I do is Classic Edition Sources: Environmental Studies (McGraw-Hill, 2009). It bears a 2009 copyright date even though it came out in February of 2008. It's an anthology of environmental science essays "of enduring relevance to the field." But the essays can also be very timely.

As a case in point, one item I put in the book, thinking of Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous impact on New Orleans, was Orrin H. Pilkey and Robert S. Young, "Will Hurricane Katrina Impact Shoreline Management?" Journal of Coastal Research, November 2005, which says that it may be time for the federal government to withdraw support for post-storm rebuilding in particularly vulnerable areas such as the Gulf Coast.

If you ask folks in New Orleans, that is a rather controversial notion. But if Katrinas keep happening, rebuilding can bust the federal budget. And right now, as I write this, CNN is calling Hurricane Gustav "the storm of the century... as bad as it gets... the mother of all storms." Its impact could be worse than Katrina's. We'll know later this week.

So classes start this next week, and any teacher using the book has a marvelous opportunity to get students engaged with current events by having them read and discuss the Pilkey essay.

Should my publisher be promoting the book by touting its timeliness? Considering what Gustav may be about to do, that could seem pretty insensitive. Fortunately, teachers have already selected their texts for the fall term, so such promotion would be beside the point. But the issue of maintaining or ending federal support for rebuilding remains live. The timeliness is there, and I am hoping that teachers who have not chosen to use the book will take another look at it for next term.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Hannah is rolling along behind Gustav, with Ike and Josephine forming up behind. For current activity, visit the National Hurricane Center.

THIS ANTI-SCIENCE WORLD

2008-08-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

Last week, while I was in Denver for the World Science Fiction Convention, Victor Deeb, a retired chemist in Marlboro, MA, had his home research lab confiscated by the cops. He apparently had not broken any laws or civic ordinances, but Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro’s code enforcement officer, said, “I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation."

She also said that since his home is a residential home in a residential neighborhood, he has violated zoning laws. But she only thinks he's crossed a line.

C'mon! Either he broke the law, in which case the cops are right to raid and confiscate, or he didn't, in which case they're way out of line.

Robert Bruce Thompson, the author of Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments, blogged this at Make:

"Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: 'Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.'

"In effect, the Massachusetts authorities have invaded Deeb's lab, apparently without a warrant, and stolen his property. Deeb, presumably under at least the implied threat of further action, has not objected to the warrantless search and the confiscation of his property. Or perhaps he's just biding his time. It appears that Deeb has grounds for a nice juicy lawsuit here."

Thompson also comes right out and calls this governmental tyranny. We might add that it's not really a surprise. Once upon a time, kids normally played with chemistry sets. They even made black powder, nitroglycerin, and ammonium iodide, and they blew things up! But today you can't buy that sort of chemistry set (and you can't get the chemicals at the drugstore the way we used to), apparently because those who control such things fear the little darlings will hurt themselves--or someone else. Why, they might blow up their school! (I know I once nearly burned down the family house! My parents, in their wisdom, gave me a fire extinguisher in case it happened again.)

Another reason is society's general ignorance and fear of science. Evolution is the devil's work, genetic engineering is unnatural, and vaccines make you sick. Right. And folks don't want to hear different, do they? Fear of science is a real problem.

If you've been reading this blog, you know I'm interested in 3D printing. One 3D printer, the RepRap printer, is intended to develop into a self-reproducing or von Neuman machine. If it ever reaches that point, we will face a future in which our machines no longer need us to make more of them. Add in AI and robotics, and some folks will surely see the human species facing a serious threat.

So what happens when a cop who reads this blog finds a 3D printer in a house? Will it be confiscated? Or maybe the cop doesn't have to read this blog. The machine is not a commercial product. It doesn't look familiar--building one is not "a customary home occupation." It's research, and research--says Ms. Wilderman--is illegal at home. You have to have an official lab, in a properly zoned part of town.

And there goes the classic myth of the backyard inventor. Not allowed any more. Of course, it also takes care of the mad scientist. He or she is not allowed either!

If you want to see more comments, go to Slashdot.

LIFE ON MARS?

2008-08-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

Well, no.

But the latest word is that the scientists behind the Phoenix lander, which has just established that there is in fact water on Mars, have also found something else.

They're holding the details close, but there's a report the President has been briefed about something even bigger than the water find. It isn't life, they say, but once they've finished analyzing what they have, the announcement will be huge.

Way back in the 1970s, when the Viking lander was finding weird chemistry in the soil, I wrote for Astronomy mag that it looked like biology to me ("The quest for life on Mars," Astronomy, 3, 6-21, July 1976; "Life on Mars: Ambiguous results," Astronomy, 5, 26-33, January 1977). That turned out to be a minority opinion, with the consensus opting for chemistry instead, but a few revisionists have been at work.

So what is this huge new development? A fossil? A bit of organic material? A sandwich wrapper? A rusty bolt whose thread is neither metric nor English? We have to be patient, but I for one am eager to know.

And I'm willing to bet that it will be a topic of conversation at the Denver Worldcon next week.

NEW BOOK COMING--ENERGY ISSUES

2008-06-18T11:54:00.000-07:00

I already do three textbook anthologies for McGraw-Hill:

Classic Editions Sources: Environmental Studies,
Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Environmental Issues, and
Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Issues in Science, Technology and Society

As of this afternoon, a fourth one is scheduled for December 2008, just in time for Spring 2009 courses:

Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Energy and Society

It will cover peak oil, fuel efficiency, clean coal, global warming, nuclear power, wastes, and reprocessing, alternative energy, and "free energy."

The reason for the book is simple: Energy issues are of huge importance to society, related problems such as global warming desperately need attention, and this year rapidly rising oil and gas prices are bringing "energy" home to more and more people. Energy & Society courses are out there, but they use a mixed bag of texts and other readings. This book will provide a compact, affordable package of important readings. If you teach such a course, watch for McGraw-Hill's offer of examination copies. (You can also request a copy of the table of contents from me.)

A CRISIS OF TRUST

2008-04-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago, I said I was working on a book on 3D printing. I still am, an article will appear in the science fiction magazine Analog, and another article will appear in a book on "Values and Technology" edited by Gabriel Ricci of Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. That second article will deal with the impact of 3D printing on trust; the potential impact is huge, for as soon as it becomes possible to make convincingly "real" objects of various kinds, we will no longer be able to trust that something we can hold in our hands is really what it seems to be. Imagine creationists manufacturing fossils that prove humans and dinosaurs coexisted, or corrupt cops manufacturing evidence, and you get some idea of the ramifications.

As the lead-in to that discussion, I have been looking at what the computer revolution--short of 3D printers--has done to trust. This is part of chapter 5 in the book, and so far what I have is:

A Crisis of Trust

Before the PC, no one had ever heard of cyber-crime. Of course, programmers had figured out ways to use mainframes to steal money, but identity theft and the various forms of modern fraud were on few people’s radar.

That doesn’t mean they never happened. Even in the age of ubiquitous personal computers, the easiest way to get someone’s personal information is still what it always was: go through their garbage. A second technique, known as “social engineering,” amounts to little more than asking. If you get a call from a stranger who says he or she is from your bank, and they need your username and password to check security, just hang up; they’re not from the bank! “Phishing,” emails that link you to a site that looks like your bank’s login page, is a variation on the theme. “Domain-name poisoning,” a trick that sets network nodes between your computer and your bank so that even though you actually type in your bank’s URL when you wish to contact them, you are diverted to a fraudster’s site, is a more sophisticated and less detectable variation. Viruses that capture and send on your login data are a variation on the “shoulder-surfing” that can victimize people using credit cards on phones in public.

The “Nigerian scam” might seem more computer-specific. It begins with an email starting like so:

'This letter may come to you as a surprise but I really prayed to God to help me choose somebody that will be my true partner.

'My name is James Savimbi. I am the first son of Mr. Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the UNITA movement in Angola. Maybe you know that my father was killed recently in Angola by the Angolan Government soldiers and he has since been buried.

'Two weeks before he died (May be he knows he will die), he called me and showed me a box containing US$20 million and some Diamond value about US$15 million. He sent the box to a security company in Europe for safe keeping with a false name. …'

Mr. Savimbi of course needs your help, which will involve your bank account numbers and the occasional check to pay fees and bribe officials. In return you will get as much as half the loot. You, of course, are much too savvy to bite, but the scam is extraordinarily lucrative, victimizing even Harvard professors. It also has a long history, reaching back to the days before email.

If there is a lesson here, it is that we have to be cautious about trusting strangers. It’s not a new lesson, for caution has always been a good idea. What is new in connection with computers is that it is no longer just other people we have to be cautious about.

I have heard book collectors complain that they can no longer trust that a paper manuscript is an original and therefore worth collecting. That is, there is no longer such a thing as an “original manuscript.” Before computers, manuscripts were typed (even earlier, they were handwritten). Since copies could be made only at considerable labor and expense, collectors were happy to pay large sums for unique originals, ideally with hand-written corrections. Carbons and photocopies were easy to identify. Now that writers use word processors, a copy of a manuscript is only a button-push away. Worse yet from the collector’s standpoint, some writers never print a single copy of a manuscript. They just email the file to the publisher. And electronic files are so easy to copy that “original” becomes a meaningless term.
Related to this, when decent photocopiers became widely available, some people quickly discovered that a photocopy of a dollar bill could fool a vending machine. Vending machines were promptly improved, but then came color laser printers which, for awhile, could print copies of bills good enough to fool some cashiers. Today’s bills have a number of features that a printer just can’t copy, and future bills will contain computer chips (RFID chips) to make it even harder.

Computer files, however, cannot be so easily safe-guarded. As a result, one computer-related crime is theft of intellectual property. When a book, musical piece, or film is a computer file, it is extraordinarily easy to give copies to friends or post them on websites. If the number of copies were small, no one would mind much, just as no one ever made much fuss over music-lovers who copied records to tape. But computers make it much easier to make such copies, and the number of copies can easily be large enough to cut into sales of legitimate books and recordings. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has become notorious for its war on music piracy, which has included suing children for large sums. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been somewhat more restrained.

Illicit copying is not the only computer-related offense involving photos and sound and video recordings. In the pre-computer past, it was possible but difficult to alter photos, or to edit a sound tape by splicing out portions, or to dub a tape with fragments from others to make someone seem to say something they never did. But such manipulations were relatively easy to spot. Today, photos and sound files can be edited almost as easily as can text files, and the necessary software is widely available. With photos, we actually say that an edited picture has been “Photoshopped.” We don’t have an equivalent word for sound files, but very effective free software is available (look for Audacity). The signs of editing remain detectable, but they are less obvious, especially to the untrained eye or ear.
So far, video is harder to manipulate, but the software exists and people are beginning to realize that just as they cannot trust a photo or sound recording to represent faithfully objective reality, even video may be suspect. Since doctored images and recordings have shown up on national news programs, people have already begun to trust the news less than they used to.

And trust is important to the smooth working of society. In fact, it is so important that people actually speak of an “economy of trust” that facilitates political, financial, and other interactions. We cannot vote for a politician we cannot trust to look out for our interests. We cannot put our money in a bank or a mutual fund that we cannot trust to keep it safe and even growing for us. We cannot buy insurance from a company we cannot trust to honor its promises. Politicians, banks, and insurance companies (and some other businesses) therefore try very hard to convince us that they are trustworthy. They have an easier time of it because we are brought up to trust our parents, teachers, ministers and other adults, and despite political and business scandals, that training sticks. We are willing to trust, and even if we turn cynical toward politicians and businesses, we remain willing to trust our friends, relatives, and coworkers.

We are also, of course, willing to trust the evidence of our senses. There was a time when that meant trusting that what we saw or heard for ourselves was real and undoctored. Today much of what we see and hear is electronically mediated. We see pictures in magazines, on television, and on websites. We hear recordings of what people said. We see video clips. And those of us who are aware of how easy it is to manipulate electronic images and recordings are less willing to trust them.

Does this damage our social interactions? Not yet, perhaps, but trust is no longer something we can take for granted. It never was, of course, but it was not so long ago that our distrust took the form of “Did he mean what he said?” rather than “Did he really say (or do) that?” Today, evidence such as photos and sound or video recordings can be manufactured to “prove” anything we like. The technology to edit images and recordings is more and more available and people are more and more aware of what it can do. To some, skepticism is now the default mode, and one major use of the Internet is consulting websites and discussion groups to learn the truth behind the news or a corporation’s claims. And politicians, government agencies and businesses (even Fox News) are attempting to tilt perceptions of their trustworthiness by, for instance, rewriting Wikipedia entries and hiring bloggers to praise them.

What recourse do we have when our trust is betrayed? Thanks to the Internet, anyone can deploy the weapon of publicity. Unfortunately, that is often the only weapon available. In financial matters, we have lawyers and lawsuits, and perhaps America’s famous litigiousness owes something to the growing threat to trust posed by modern technology.

Your thoughts are as always welcome. Indeed, if you say you want to see more pieces of the book, you'll make me happy, and I'll probably post a few more as I go along. I do not, however, want to post the entire book here.

WORLD FOOD SUPPLY DWINDLING

2007-12-18T05:28:00.000-08:00

The UN Food and Agricultural Organization has just announced that the world food supply is dwindling and the world's poor face the "perfect storm." See this link for the full story.

Note that they're calling this "unforeseen," which just ain't so. I've written on this myself, in "Trapped Between Damnations: The True Meaning of the Population Crisis," Analog, January 1996. The point was the inevitable collision between population and food supply. At the time I noted that per capita food production peaked in the mid-80s; according to the latest Vital Signs (Norton 2007), the figures have fluctuated since then, but have NOT surpassed the mid-80s figures and in fact have declined since I wrote that article. What the UN is saying is that now the food supply is being affected by high fuel prices, diversion of land and crops to biofuels, and global warming. Prices are rising, and though residents of wealthy countries such as the US can deal with that, those of poor countries cannot. Indeed, high prices for food and fuel mean that aid agencies are finding that their budgets cannot supply as much aid as in the past. Lots of folks are going to go hungry!

What's the answer? Global warming isn't about to go away. Fuel isn't about to get any cheaper. We need new energy supplies, new attitudes toward energy use, and new willingness to conserve, live closer to work, and be efficient. Most important of all we have to reduce population size, for if we don't, Mother Nature will. This UN report is an early sign that she's warming up to the task.

Cyborg Insects and My Fifteen Minutes of Fame

2007-10-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

At the tail end of 2006, I posted about being asked to "give a talk at the kickoff meeting--in Honolulu!--for DARPA’s HI-MEMS research program. The Program Director, Amit Lal, said he had read my novel Sparrowhawk (Ace, 1990), in which I posited implanting computer chips in genetically engineered insects and other animals." I also noted that after looking at the logistics of traveling from Maine to Honolulu and back in three days, I begged off. But I developed a Powerpoint for the talk I would have given if, and I posted a link here.

A couple of weeks ago I had a call from EE-Times reporter R. Colin Johnson. He wanted to talk about Hi-Mems, and I obliged. The result was the article "DARPA hatches plan for insect cyborgs to fly reconnaissance" (which includes some nice quotations from me), a flurry of hits on my original post, and a sudden rash of mentions around the 'Net.

Predictably, the echoes don't always get it right. One says my 1990 novel Sparrowhawk was responsible for triggering the DARPA project, and what director Amit Lal told me was that someone recommended the novel to his attention after the project had been proposed. Another said it all happened in 1996.

But the attention is all welcome, and if anyone needs a reason to bookmark this blog, I suppose this will do as an example of how what I write sometimes turns out to seem a bit prophetic.

3D FOR EARLY ADOPTERS

2007-09-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

The Desktop Factory folks just sent out a newsletter announcing that:

Desktop Factory has received extensive press coverage over the past several months, and as a result the emails and calls continue to pour in with requests to get in the order queue. Most recently we made the cover of Popular Science magazine's September 2007 issue — which has pushed interest from the technical community over the top. So after careful consideration, we have decided to respond to the demand of early adopters (you know who you are) who are clamoring to get their hands on this innovative and exciting new technology. We are now taking reservations for our Desktop Factory 3D Printer with a 10% deposit! Shipments are planned for 2008.

The $4,995 price may seem a little steep, but it's comparable to what folks spend on other toys, such as snowmobiles and motorboats. It's also comparable to what you can spend on a high-end computer (especially if you want a Mac). So if you like to be the first on the block with the latest toy, and you have the scratch, jump in now.

I think you'll have fun!

3D PRINTING IS ALMOST READY FOR THE MASS MARKET!

2007-09-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

A year ago I posted an essay on 3D printing, calling attention to a number of interesting developments that raised the possibility that the technology would before long be affordable for home users. By January 2007, I had to update the story, reporting that the price had already dropped drastically from the $20,000 neighborhood. The Fab@Home group had released the open-source specs and parts list for do-it-yourselfers to build their own; the bill would come to about $2,400. I said:

By next year, someone will be selling assembled versions. The year after, the price will be down to $1,000. Ten years after that, the large part of the economy that depends on selling small plastic parts, ornaments, and doohickeys will be hurting.

As it has turned out, my predictions weren't nearly bold enough. You can now buy the kits in a package for about $3,000 (assembly still required). If you have a little more disposable income--on the order of what loads of folks plunk down for a snowmobile or motorboat or even one of the bigger plasma TVs--there is Idealab's Desktop Factory for just under $5,000! The company says:

Within three years, Desktop Factory's 3D printers will be affordable even for home use. Imagine your child being able to select a toy from a catalog or even design his or her own and create it right at home. Think about the benefits of making your own parts for sprinkler systems or small appliances at your desk. The long-range possibilities are endless. Desktop Factory's 3D printers are set to unleash a new wave of talent and productivity in a three-dimensional world.

So where can you buy it? In May, Engadget said they were due to ship later in 2007. They responded to my email saying, "We entered Beta with our first customer on 7/23/07. All is going very well and we intend to expand beta later this month."

It won't be long, folks. This has the potential to be as disruptive a technology as we have ever seen, and it is developing with astonishing speed. And it isn't just a matter of making toys and sprinkler parts at home. This link, dated August 2007, is about using a special 3D inkjet printer to make artificial bones for implants. Things are happening!

As the gadgets get better and cheaper, you will be able to make any small part you need. Current businesses that make small parts (and small toys) are in for a shock, for their sales will drop drastically. It is already time for them to start preparing CAD-CAM files to sell online to users of 3D printers. Before long, that may be about all they have to sell. Note, of course, that they will be facing intense competition from hobbyists with their own files for sale, not to mention file-sharers.

MIRACLE OR BUNKUM?

2007-09-09T06:06:00.000-07:00

A few months ago (http://technoprobe.blogspot.com/2007/01/cross-your-fingers.html), I posted on the announcement of Eestor's new supercapacitor replacement for batteries in electric cars (and elsewhere). It was billed as a "battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, [that] will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals." First deliveries were to be for the Zenn electric car, scheduled for late in 2007. It seemed at the time quite miraculous, and I have been waiting with bated breath for the announcement that the Eestor gadget was finally available.

Even then, there was some skepticism. The gadget seemed to violate what was known in terms of chemistry and physics, and claims that it could pack 500 miles worth of driving energy into a 10 minute charge seemed too good to be true. And you know what they say: If something seems too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

It's beginning to look that way. The Eestor publicity machine seems to have been active lately, for there have been numerous news reports abut the secretive company and its world-changing gadget. But there have also been reports that it won't be delivered to Zenn this year after all. Next year, says company CEO Richard Weir. Maybe.

I'd like to think it's a "normal" delay in the introduction of a new technology. Unfortunately, the secrecy, the hype, and the "too good to be true" all remind me of such things as the Orbo "free energy" machine, which was supposed to be publically demoed in July. Is it a scam? It sounds like one now, but we'll have to wait and see to be sure.

"Free energy" machines, of course, are pure bunkum. See Robert Park, Voodoo Science (Oxford University Press, 2000). Park is a University of Maryland physicist who dedicates a great deal of his time to debunking bunkum. See his "What's New" newsletter.

THE DIGITAL TOUCH

2007-06-06T05:48:00.000-07:00

It's relatively easy to turn light and sound into electrical signals. We did it first with analog radio, microphones, recordings, TV, and camcorders. Now analog has been thoroughly replaced by digital, but we're still pretty much limited to light and sound.

Sure, people have played with adding smell to web pages. The trick is a variation on the color ink-jet printer, only instead of ink, it outputs a mix of stinks that matches a particular odor. See How Stuff Works for details. The basic idea has definite appeal to companies that sell stinky things such as perfume, flowers, wine, or food online, but it does require that the consumer buy one more darned thing, which is perhaps the main reason why it hasn't caught on. Not that there aren't other drawbacks too: I shiver at the thought of teen boys competing to see who can produce the most putrid web page! Or of what hackers might do with it!

Sight, hearing, and smell. Taste isn't likely to find a home on web pages, but touch could, and indeed people have been working on ways to make a mouse or other device vibrate when run over a "texture" zone on a web page. This has clear benefits for the blind, for instance, as do pinpads that can display Braille. More ambitious is the sort of thing that HapTex is working on: representing fabrics both visually and tactilely in such a way that an online person can explore the texture of the fabric with a fingertip. According to New Scientist, "Detailed measurements of a fabric's stress, strain and deformation properties are fed into a computer, recreating it virtually. Two new physical interfaces then allow users to interact with these virtual fabrics – an exoskeleton glove with a powered mechanical control system attached to the back and an array of moving pins under each finger. The 'haptic' glove exerts a force on the wearer's fingers to provide the sensation of manipulating the fabric, while the 'touching' pins convey a tactile sense of the material's texture." A prototype will supposedly be ready for showing off by the end of 2007.

It's easy to imagine applications in ecommerce. More important may be telework, for although it is possible for someone to remote-control a machine or use a robotic arm to pick up objects, it is much easier if one can actually feel what one is doing, in which case you have telepresence, the feeling that you are really there. Essential here is the concept of force-feedback, meaning that a force gets sent (fed) back to the user proportional to how hard the user is touching the object at the other end. Lacking force-feedback, it would be difficult to use a robotic arm to pick up an egg, change a baby, or do surgery (telesurgery), at least not without doing damage. Force-feedback devices are already found in joysticks and other gaming devices.

Something similar will be necessary if robots are ever to be given a sense of touch, but here there is an added difficulty. Everything above involves a human in the system and uses electronic sensors to generate signals that can be relayed to the human's own sensors in such a way that the human brain is convinced that it is feeling something real. With a robot, we need to give it the sensors and then process the information in such a way that the robot can make sense of and function in the world. People are working on it, but so far most of the progress is on the sensor end. For instance, Vladimir Lumelsky at NASA Goddard is working on sensor-containing skin for robots. So far the sensors are big and clunky and they're only infra-red proximity sensors. But Lumelsky says that in the future the sensors will be smaller. If we want roboskin that does a good job of mimicking human skin, it'll also need multiple types of sensors—pressure, vibration, heat, cold, pain, and perhaps more.

Where will it all end? Well, for years, people have been dreaming of the full-body virtual-reality suit for gaming, telework, even sex. Here's a nice clean link, though it's a bit old. If you want something raunchier, it won't be hard to find. And it may not be too long before it's on the market. There are many applications of force-feedback, haptic interfaces in ecommerce, telesurgery, telepresence, and robotics. Add the digital smell, and maybe we will finally see the teletourism of science fiction. Log in, go to the beach, feel the sand on your butt, smell the sea, feel wet, feel the jellyfish sting your legs…

CROSS YOUR FINGERS!

2007-01-22T06:17:00.000-08:00

This morning Technology Review posted the latest word on EEStor's miraculous solution to high gasoline prices. This Texas company says it has a "battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, [that] will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals."

Elsewhere, I have seen this gadget described as charging in 10 minutes with enough juice ($9 worth) to drive for 500 miles at a cost equivalent of about $.45 per gallon.

It sounds too good to be true, and sure enough some of those who post comments on Technology Review's site are sniping merrily away. But if this new gizmo is half as good as EEStor claims, it will be a winner. And the first cars to use it are supposed to be available soon. The cars will be from Zenn, which is reportedly expecting delivery of EEStor power units later this year:

"The first commercial application of the EESU is intended to be used in electric vehicles under a technology agreement with ZENN Motor Company. EEStor, Inc. remains on track to begin shipping production 15 kilowatt-hour Electrical Energy Storage Units (EESU) to ZENN Motor Company in 2007 for use in their electric vehicles. The production EESU for ZENN Motor Company will function to specification in operating environments as severe as negative 20 to plus 65 degrees Celsius, will weigh less than 100 pounds, and will have the ability to be recharged in a matter of minutes."

Cross your fingers, folks. Maybe it isn't too good to be true.

SMOKE IN HOUSE? TURN OFF SMOKE DETECTOR!

2007-01-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

That title doesn't make much sense, does it? But back in the days of the Gingrich Congress, the 90s, Republicans said it publicly: Don't fund Earthwatch satellites! They might tell us something we don't want to hear! Or, to be a mite fairer, they might tell us we have problems that we will have to spend loads of money to fix.

Now they're at it again. According to the Washington Post:

"The government's ability to understand and predict hurricanes, drought and climate changes of all kinds is in danger because of deep cuts facing many Earth satellite programs and major delays in launching some of its most important new instruments, a panel of experts has concluded....

"'NASA's budget has taken a major hit at the same time that NOAA's program has fallen off the rails,' said panel co-chairman Berrien Moore III of the University of New Hampshire. 'This combination is very, very disturbing, and it's coming at the very time that we need the information most.'"

Why? Well, money is of course part of the story. Between budget overruns and kickbacks to campaign contributors, there just isn't much to spare for little things like smoke detectors. But as in the Gingrich days, there is a persistent Republican refusal to believe that anything American business and industry do could possibly be causing serious problems for the place where we live (like setting the house on fire). The Grand Old Party is far too blind to anything that conflicts with its commitment to Big Business and the rich. Global warming? No such thing. (Though even the Bush Administration seems to be coming around at last.) Alternate energy? Who needs it! Sustainability? Precautionary principle? Liberal claptrap!

Me, I'd rather spend the money going to fighting the war in Iraq on fighting environmental problems, which threaten us far more than do terrorists. In fact, I have long argued that our "Defense" Department should have a broader mission, including defending us against environmental problems. Just think what DoD's budget could do for prevention and repair! It might even be able to deal with things like the Katrina aftermath without turning them into clusterf**ks!

NOW LET'S CHANGE THE SCALE!

2007-01-15T13:54:00.000-08:00

The Carnegie Mellon open-source 3D printer is the size of a microwave oven and can in principle build a huge variety of things that could fit inside a box that small. But there's no real limit on how big a 3D printer can be.

Really? How about one big enough to build a house? Well, why not, and in fact engineers in both California and England are constructing arrangements of concrete-spraying robots mounted on a framework that lets them move like the computer-controlled syringe in that 3D printer. Click here for the details.

"The first prototype — a watertight shell of a two-storey house built in 24 hours without a single builder on site — will be erected in California before April.

"A rival design, being pioneered in the East Midlands, with £1.2m of government funding, will include sunken baths, fireplaces and cornices. There are even plans for robots to supplant painters and decorators by spraying colourful frescoes at an affordable price. ...

"The researchers in Los Angeles claim their robot will be able to build the shell of a house in 24 hours. 'Compared to a conventional house, the speed of construction will be increased 200-fold and the building costs will be reduced to a fifth of what they are today,' said Khoshnevis.

"The rival British system is likely to take at least a week but will include more sophisticated design features, with the computer’s nozzle weaving in ducts for water pipes, electrical wiring and ventilation within the panels of gypsum or concrete."

This is seriously cool! But an important question is what else can be built using a similar approach. How about highways? What would an artist use it for? And of course, if you can make 3D printers the size of microwave ovens and airplane hangars, you should certainly be able to build them any size in between those extremes.

Does that stimulate your thinking?

3D PRINTERS AND DIRTY MINDS

2007-01-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

I'm at Arisia this weekend and chatting with assorted science fiction and fantasy people about possible uses of the 3D printer (fabber) mentioned a couple of posts ago.

One thing that seems to enchant people is the idea of using the fabber to sculpt replicas of body parts of celebrities.

The Carnegie Mellon team that designed the kit reports that it has successfully tested the fabber with chocolate and cake frosting.

So suppose that you have a CAD-CAM file of the naked body of your favorite actor or actress. (Never mind for now how that got on the market!) Convince your Significant Other to lie down on a table (presumably covered with a plastic tablecloth). Position the fabber over them (moving it as/if necessary) and have it generate a 3D overlay, using, say, frosting.

When the overlay is complete, remove the fabber and lick the frosting off.

If you're into group activities, invite in your friends.

I bet you'd have lots of fun!

And sure, I'm having fun right now. But I'm willing to bet that once enough of these fabbers are out there, those CAD/CAM files will be on the market. Some will be fakes. Some won't be of celebrities, though they may look quite delicious. And a few, once the celebrities realize there's a new earning opportunity available, will be genuine.

And people will use frosting, chocolate, plastic... Someone's sure to try lime jello, too, but I'm afraid that would take too long to set.

Please note that I have left a great many details to your no doubt fertile and filthy imaginations.

3D PRINTER NEEDS 3D SCANNER

2007-01-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

Thinking about the 3D printer quickly leads to questions, such as what sort of file will it print? One answer is CAD/CAM files--spec files for the objects to be printed. But when we print 2D, we're talking about text files and graphics prepared with familiar 2D software. Or prepared with a scanner.

Is there such a thing as a 3D scanner? In a word, yes. But they aren't for home use. The cheapest I see is priced at $2,495! (It gets lots worse!) Or you can make your own, which must appeal to anyone DIY enough to want the 3D printer kit.

And then there's DAVID:

"DAVID is a freeware software for laser range scanning. All you need is a PC, a camera (e.g. a webcam), a background corner, and a laser which projects a line onto the object you want to scan. So everyone can use it to scan objects without high costs; this is the big advantage over commercial solutions which are rather expensive.

"DAVID has been developed by the computer scientists Dr. Simon Winkelbach and Sven Molkenstruck from the Institute for Robotics and Process Control, Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany."

But everything I'm seeing here seems limited to scanning the exterior contours of an object. Since 3D printing can reproduce objects with empty spaces totally surrounded by solid material, what we need is a desktop CT (X-ray) or ultrasound scanner to pick up the interior details. Both are commonly found in medical settings, and there's one, the Echoblaster, that might come close to being usable for our purposes. Price not given, so that may mean the basic idea of an ultrasound scanner would need a different implementation.

Or maybe you just cut the object you're scanning open, which makes the inside outside, and use the regular 3D scanner.

3D PRINTING COMING HOME?

2007-01-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

When I discussed 3D printing in the Emerging Technologies course (see the September 24, 2006, entry), I said that if the price came down enough--from the then-current $20,000 neighborhood (minimum)--people would start taking them home. Well, according to New Scientist, a team at Carnegie Mellon has developed an open-source 3D-printer kit that should cost about $2,400 for the parts. You put it together with a soldering iron and screwdriver.

The standard version of their Freeform fabricator – or "fabber" – is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free.

Want to bet on these? By next year, someone will be selling assembled versions. The year after, the price will be down to $1,000. Ten years after that, the large part of the economy that depends on selling small plastic parts, ornaments, and doohickeys will be hurting.

THE SPEECH NOT GIVEN

2006-12-31T07:56:00.000-08:00

In October 2006, I was invited to give a talk at the kickoff meeting--in Honolulu!--for DARPA’s HI-MEMS research program. The Program Director, Amit Lal, said he had read my novel Sparrowhawk (Ace, 1990), in which I posited implanting computer chips in genetically engineered insects and other animals.

Of course I was flattered by the invitation, but when it came to looking at the logistics, I just couldn't do it. There are no direct flights from the East Coast to Hawaii, and I could not see spending 40 hours in cramped airline seats to give a one-hour talk. At least not without a lot more time to spend getting acquainted with the beach!

So I said no, but not before developing the Powerpoint for the talk I would have given, if only. Click here if you want to see the version of it I prepared for more general consumption.

IF YOU CAN'T BLIND THEM WITH BRILLIANCE...

2006-12-16T05:37:00.000-08:00

I've just gone through the December 2006 issue of the Communications of the ACM, and the most commentable article is "RFID and the End of Cash?" by Ian Angell and Jan Kietzmann, which offers enough to feed the spasms of the maddest of conspiracy fans.

The basic point is that RFID (radio frequency identification) chips will soon be in everything we buy. Worse than that, they will even be in our money (reports that this was coming were called "premature" in 2003). At that point we will no longer be able to buy anything anonymously. There will be no under-the-counter cash-only jobs. The government will be able to calculate exactly how much you owe in taxes, it will be able to tax you--if you don't want to pony up on April 15--by remotely inactivating your money, and it will be able to stimulate the economy by putting expiration dates on your bills (Use it or lose it, folks). And if you find a way to inactivate the chip (perhaps by microwaving the bill), well, a bill without a working chip won't be any good.

Since any goon with a remote reader will be able to tell whether you're worth mugging, there's gonna be a big market for foil-lined wallets. But that won't do much to fight the government's Big Eye. Fortunately there's a possible answer to both problems, as well as to the worry about people being able to read what's in your car or house. Get a good supply of random assorted (for stuff you don't have) RFID chips--at a nickel apiece, $20 will buy 400--and scatter them around the house. Dump a dozen in every drawer. Throw a dozen under each car seat. Sew money chips to your shirt or tie. Build them into your belt or wallet or purse. Add a $50 chip to every $5, $10, or $20 bill in your wallet.

Let 'em scan.

If you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

And if you can't see a golden business opportunity here, you're too dumb to be using a computer.

When you start selling chip-bags, chip-shirts, chip-ties, chip-belts, chip-wallets, chip-purses, etc., you can send my cut to my Paypal account at profeaston@adelphia.net.

NEW BOOK--OFF THE MAIN SEQUENCE

2006-12-03T06:48:00.000-08:00

I've been the book columnist for Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine for almost 30 years. Over that time, I have deliberately paid more attention to the small press and other "related" publishing activities than most other book columnists for the SF&F magazines, and when I go to cons I find that the attention is appreciated.

So now I have drawn most of that coverage together in Off the Main Sequence, a Borgo Press book. Here you will find almost three decades of SF small press activity as well as coverage of small press, poetry, writing, literary criticism and biography, popular science, and the development of electronic publishing over the period. This last may be the most important part of the book, for it is a history that is, I think, covered hardly anywhere else, and it is an important part of the history of the Computer Age.

Remember IRIS, DART, Serendipity, High Mesa, "disk-top" publishing, Soft Press, SoftServ? They're all there, as well as a good deal more.

Here's the introduction to this section of the book:

I came a bit late to computers. I had spent a summer after college as a junior assistant programmer on the Lunar Excursion Module simulator and studied FORTRAN in grad school, but I didn’t get a PC until the mid-1980s.

That PC was a TRS-80 Model 4P from Radio Shack. It came with 64K of RAM, which I upgraded to 128K even before I took it home. It had no hard drive. And for the time it was actually a pretty nice machine, though it seems quite unutterably quaint today. Computers have come a long way in a very short time.

So has digital publishing, once known as “electronic” and “disk-top” publishing. About as soon as people could take a computer home for their desktop, some saw charm in being able to read books, magazines, and newspapers on a screen. They would be prepared in electronic form and marketed on reusable disks or cartridges. The main obstacle was the clunkiness of the reading device, but it seemed inevitable that PCs would shrink in size. And they did, of course. We now have laptops no bigger than hardbound books and palmtops no bigger than paperbacks, though their screens are typically dim and headache-inducing. They devour batteries, too, and most folks show a very persistent fond-ness for paper reading materials. The cyberbook just hasn’t caught on. Most of those who tried to turn digital publishing into money-making enterprises gave up and vanished from the scene.

But computer users are now reading more in electronic form than ever before. The Internet, with its profusion of Web pages, came along and made it possible for anyone to publish their rant, opinion, poem, story, or novel very easily. The result has been an astonishing explosion of reading matter. A great deal is conspiracy theories and other psycho-ceramic tripe, but there is also an immense amount of high-quality information and fiction. Much of it is even free.

Why did I call this book Off the Main Sequence? My previous collection of reviews was Periodic Stars (Borgo, 1997), covering writers who had appeared repeatedly in my column up to that time. Periodic stars, like most stars, fall into a band on the classic Hertzsprung-Russell plot of star color versus brightness; this band is known as the “main sequence.” “Off the main sequence” refers to all those stars not in that band. Here I suppose that the science fiction put out in paperback and hardbound by the various major trade (mass-market) publishers corresponds to the astronomical main sequence. “Off the main sequence” simply means all the science fiction and related material that does not show up on the usual bookstore shelf.

THE SECRET OF CLOSED MINDS?

2006-11-16T06:20:00.000-08:00

In the last few days I have been playing with the idea of memory.

Associative memory is an old idea, and it has been used in attempts to give useful memory to AI. In fact, a quick Google on the term will find a huge number of computer science-related hits. But the basic idea is that of free association. If I say "dog," you associate the word with "hairy," "barks," "teeth," "pants," "drools," and "sniffs butts" (among other things). The list of associations amounts to a definition of "dog."

In my own mind, I think of an idea as a sort of blobject with hooks:

I think of my brain as containing a rack from which a few ideas can be hung. Then other ideas are hung from them.

The more ideas I have in my mind, the more hooks are available for hanging more ideas and the easier it is to learn new things.

But some people don't seem to be able to learn new things better as they get older. It is as if the hooks on their ideas are tangled, or as if the ideas are installed upside down, which might match up with circular thinking. (God created life; the existence of life proves the existence of God; do you know anyone who thinks that way?).

What I like about this graphic metaphor for memory is that it just might explain the difference between open minds and closed minds in a useful way. What do you think?

THE LONGEST CAST, PART IV

2006-10-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

The latest word in the press is that the rocket has been found and the company plans to return the payload components to its "partners."

I'll be interested to see what shape my fly is in, but since it will surely be awhile, here's the picture I promised way back when:

To explain the delay, I was hoping to post a picture of the fly attached to the certificate saying that it had made it into space. That isn't going to happen, so here it is.

THE LONGEST CAST, PART III

2006-09-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

According to this morning's press release,

The vehicle was intended to fly beyond the international definition of space (100km or 62 miles), with a final anticipated apogee of 365,000 feet or 69.1 miles in 155 seconds. The vehicle flew on a flawless trajectory for nine seconds, reaching an altitude of 24,000 feet. At that point, an anomaly occurred. The anomaly caused a wobble in the vehicle's flight trajectory. The vehicle continued upward reaching a peak altitude of 42,000 feet. The vehicle then returned to earth, unpowered, impacting the New Mexico desert. Radar track was lost approximately 2,000 feet above the desert floor. UP Aerospace and Spaceport America personnel are continuing to search for the vehicle.

So it made it eight miles above the surface of the planet. That's not even close to space, but I can't say the failure is a huge surprise. The space age is rife with similar--and worse!--failures on the way to success. No one should take this failure as a failure of the private space effort. Success will come!

As for the Longest Cast, I do think it safe to say that no one else in the history of fly-fishing has cast a fly sixteen miles (8 up, 8 down)!

THE LONGEST CAST, PART II

2006-09-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

Remember the trout fly that was supposed to be launched into space? The final launch date was yesterday, September 25, and though the rocket launched successfully, it suffered "an anomaly in flight causing it to 'corkscrew' at very high velocity." That is, it didn't make the altitude for space.

Click here for the latest.

My trout fly may still have gone further on a single cast than any other in history, but it didn't get where it was supposed to. As any trout fisherman will tell you, that's pretty normal.

3D PRINTING

2006-09-24T05:13:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, the only way to make a three-dimensional object was by hand. One could carve wood or bone, shape clay, blow glass, and pound metal into shape. Unfortunately, while such techniques are extraordinarily versatile, they are not good at making many identical duplicates of a single object. Molding and casting can make duplicates that seem identical to the human eye, but they nevertheless vary on the microscopic scale, which can be quite important if the duplicates are intended to function as interchangeable parts in complex machines. Machine tools such as lathes improve the situation enough to make interchangeable parts for relatively simple machines such as rifles, and indeed Eli Whitney's development of interchangeable parts for muskets helped create mass production and make America's westward expansion possible in the nineteenth century.

But early machine tools were human-controlled. It took a great deal of expertise to use them, and a fair amount of time to make each duplicate. In the late 1940s, John Parsons (head of a company that produced helicopter rotors) devised a way to make punch-card-operated electromechanical calculators generate templates for human-operated machine tools to follow. He then envisioned an extension of the system that would have automated machine tools follow the templates on their own. He became known as the father of numerical control technology and was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1985.

As computers developed, numerical control became quite sophisticated. It even became possible to design an object on a computer and feed the design to automated equipment to make the object; this is CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing). But the process remained expensive--"machine tools" meant drills and lathes capable of working hard metal--and it remained impossible to make hollow objects.

Both of these problems are now being addressed. "Rapid-prototyping" and "3D-printing" tools have been built from the basic idea that a thin layer of powder (plastic, metal, or ceramic) can be fused with a laser, or a thin film of liquid (plastic) can be polymerized (hardened) with a laser. A second layer can then be laid down atop the first and similarly fused or hardened. The trick is to build a machine that can produce and harden layers on demand. When such layers amount to slices through a 3D object (even ones with interior spaces), the accumulation of layers produces the object, as described in Ivan Amato, "Instant Manufacturing," Technology Review (November 2003). It is already finding much use in building prototypes (rapid prototyping) of items to be manufactured by more conventional means, as well as special items such as gears and machine parts, bone implants, and form-fitting items such as hearing aids. The equipment tends to be expensive, but the price is expected to decrease. Will it ever reach a level that the home consumer would feel able to afford? That is a very interesting question, as is the closely related question of what that consumer would use 3D printing for.

One new version of the technology is essentially an inkjet printer that can build up small shapes. Another version offers a 3D printer than can almost reproduce itself! (See Celeste Biever, "3D Printer to Churn Out Copies of Itself," New Scientist news service, March 18, 2005.) Still another version "prints" a biodegradable gel and distributes cells; the aim is to produce custom-designed tissues and organs for use in transplants. Researchers have already begun to develop techniques for "printing" skin and blood vessels, and the future should be very interesting. See Rebecca Camber, "Tailor-Made Skin from 'Ink' Printer," Manchester University (January 19, 2005), and Kate Green, "Printing Blood Vessels," Technology Review (January 20, 2006).

Will 3D printing "emerge"? It already has a place in industry, so one can say it has already done so in one sense. But as Amato mentions, there is enormous potential in the realm of "on-demand manufacturing," personal customization (think of case-modding!), and so on, if the equipment can be brought down enough in price. If this happens, a great many products may no longer be sold in physical form, but as computerized design files. Consumers will "print" the files to obtain the physical products.

Will consumers choose to print rather than fetch? If they do, there will be negative effects on all those companies that make and distribute the objects that can now be sold in the new form. The positive effects will be on new companies that generate and distribute design files, as well as on consumers who can get products more cheaply or can get products that can no longer be found in physical form at all (such as parts for classic cars!). The net effect is what will determine the emergence of the technology as a consumer technology.

And the technology does not stop here! Nanotechnology advocates have been talking for some time now about the "nanofactory," which will be able to manufacture on demand almost anything from a basic supply of atoms and molecules. If nanofactories are even possible (and some do question their practicality), they are much further off than home 3D printers.