Blockbuster Science

by David Siegel Bernstein

  And now for a feel-good proof of concept. In 2011, when Kaiba Gionfriddo was six weeks old, he started turning blue. He was having difficulty breathing because one of his bronchial tubes had collapsed. In early 2012, a 3-D-printed windpipe was used to hold the airway open.4 It dissolved a few years later, allowing his bronchus time to grow strong enough for normal breathing.

  HOW ABOUT A TECHNOLOGY COMBO MEAL WITH A 3-D PRINTER?

  Here is a combination of the tech ideas (all real) described in this book that we can use to create some solid science fiction…that might actually become our future. It all starts with a 3-D printer, and it ends with colonization.

  First our engineers, using some of the rocketry technology from chapter 17, transport 3-D printers to a marginally inhabitable exoplanet, perhaps Proxima b (chapter 12). Once planet-side, robots (chapter 14) are rolled out to use the printer technology to create a habitable base for future human colonists.

  GREAT TOOL, BUT ARE THERE ETHICAL ISSUES WITH 3-D PRINTING?

  I'm sure you can think up a lot of medical issues, but there are a few that might not be as obvious, at least not right away. Such as making a gun in your back den, or a neighbor producing cocaine, or a terrorist manufacturing ricin. Sorry for bringing you down. If you like to dress up, the next section will hopefully cheer you back up.

  WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

  Wearable technology is so much easier than having to lug around equipment. It is also much sneakier if you have nefarious intentions. I'm sure you have seen this in science fiction. Yes, I know the Fitbit is great for your health, and augmented reality glasses like Google Glass dumping information on you is all great and interesting. But I want to describe wearable things you might not know about such as the Bluetooth dress by Sony Ericsson. This cocktail dress lights up when the wearer gets an incoming call.5 Is it going to change the world? I don't know, but it is fun.

  How cool would a computer tattoo be? The technology is getting close. Scientists at the University of Tokyo have built a prototype of a computer screen that can be worn on your skin.6 The two-micrometers-thick polymer LED is equipped with organic photodetectors connected to a sensor. The whole contraption is attached to the volunteer with material very similar to plastic food wrap. Its job is to measure blood oxygen levels. It doesn't sound like much right now, but think of it as the first step in a journey that will eventually attach your e-mail to your wrist.

  If you aren't into tattoos, how about a bracelet? There is one that can analyze chemicals from a drop of sweat. Then it sends the data to your smartphone.7 Someday it might even be able to detect molecules linked to depression.

  CAMERA TECHNOLOGY

  Imagine how cool it would be to have a camera that takes photographs around corners. You might actually be able to buy such a camera in your lifetime. A proof of concept device already exists at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh where researchers modeled bats using a form of echolocation to build a specialized camera.8 Similar to how a bat may use sound (echolocation) to map its surroundings, these researchers bounced laser light off the floor and scattered it in all directions. Their camera was able to detect the light echoes as it smacked a test object around a corner.

  COMPUTER IDENTIFICATION

  Computers that recognize who you are as soon as you walk into a room. I'm not talking about the weak AI of your web browser that has collected information so it can flash a banner ad for products you might like, or your social media platform of choice predicting the political party you favor from what you post and who you follow. I'm talking about computers that know you for you.

  It is very nearly possible with today's technology that when you walk into your smart home, the Wi-Fi system will identify you. A human body partially blocks the radio waves between router and computer. Members of a family tend to come in different shapes and sizes, and they even walk differently. This builds a pattern that is sent to the family computer via Wi-Fi.

  As of this writing, scientists have built an algorithm that is 95 percent accurate at distinguishing two adults and 89 percent accurate with six adults in the same room.9 A system like that could identify you and tailor heat and light settings to your preference without asking. Mix in a bit of science fiction and it could detect your emotional state and cue up appropriate music, perhaps even mix a drink for you after a particularly trying day negotiating trade agreements with one of the outer colonies.

  MACHINE MIND CONTROL

  Today's best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem.

  —Phillip Alvelda, manager for DARPA's Neural Engineering System Design program

  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants humans to be able to control machines with their minds. This is not such a far-fetched idea for either good fiction or reality. Their wetware project, called Neural Engineering System Design (NESD),10 implants a small disc into the brain. This device is measured in millimeters and converts the brain's chemical signals into a digital pulse.

  This idea isn't particularly new, but NESD can connect up to a million individual neurons, which makes it easy to think your electronic tools into being more productive. You wouldn't have to leave the couch. Best of all, people with prosthetic limbs would have a lot more control.

  PARTING COMMENTS

  The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius.

  —Sid Caesar

  Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

  —Philip K. Dick

  Do you think you are real? Of course you do. What if I told you that you are really a hologram projected from quantum fluctuations at the boundary of the universe? Would you still believe you are real? My answer, for what it's worth, is yes! Cogito ergo sum.

  By the way, what does real even mean? I suppose reality can be defined as our brains’ interpretation of the messages sent up from our five senses. Science is prefaced on the assumption that the external world exists and has properties that can be observed. We use our sensory data (or robotic senses) to draw in data, and we use our brains (or computers) to interpret that data.

  Our brains create three-dimensional images from two-dimensional data. Obviously, this questions the existence of things beyond our senses. For example, did atoms only exist after we developed the technology to detect these tiny building blocks? Or is it possible that atoms always existed, senses be darned? I don't think our belief in atoms is what made them real. I'm reasonably sure they existed before the idea of an atomic model came to Democritus in 400 BCE or when we finally saw them using an atomic resolution microscope in 1983.

  Then again, thinking about something, as Democritus did with atoms, does not necessarily mean it will ever be proven to exist. I'm sure some people believe in unicorns, and yet I have never found one in any zoo or free-ranging around my garden. We have to be careful to not get circular and claim that our consciousness thinks up the idea of atoms and we are composed of atoms so that we can have a brain to have consciousness and think up atoms. I'm going to use the definition of reality to mean that something can exist without us needing to believe in it.

  DO ANY OF OUR IDEAS ABOUT REALITY MATTER?

  Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

  —John Lennon

  All that is necessary for science is that (pick the theory of your choice and write it here) it agrees with observations and that predictions can be made. We might never know the true nature of the reality of our universe. Maybe the anthropic principle (see chapter 5) is correct, and we live in the habitable region of the multiverse where the rules of physics give rise to life, and different rules apply to other regions so that each region might have its own reality. But that isn't science. It's philosophy.

  As an example of conflicting realities, I'll describe the parable of the goldfish that Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow used in their book The Grand Design.1 Imagine a goldfish hanging
out in her fishbowl. The curved sides of the bowl as well as the water give the fish a much different view of reality than we enjoy. The fish sees the path light bending as it hits the water. We landlubbers, meanwhile, see light travel a straight path.

  If the fish is intelligent enough to work out the physics of light from observation (as we mostly have), she would be able to formulate scientific laws and make predictions based on the curved light she sees. Because of the curvature and aquatic effects, the fish's scientific laws will be more complicated than ours. But is hers any less valid a perception of reality than ours? After all, she can make observations and predictions as accurately as we can. Is the fish's version of reality wrong and ours right?

  What if, with all our crazy complicated (but correct) ideas of quantum mechanics, we are the ones inside the fishbowl?

  We might not be mentally responsible for the creation of the physical world, but we can exert some thought control over it. We can augment it in ways that provide a deeper understanding of our surroundings. Or we can forget trying to understand it and create an alternate virtual reality that is completely under our control. An interesting theory covered in this chapter proposes that our entire universe might be a virtual reality. To paraphrase Shakespeare, all the universe is virtual, and we are but holograms.

  WHAT IS AUGMENTED REALITY?

  Augmented reality (AR) is an experience of reality supplemented by computer input, usually provided through displays embedded in mobile devices such as smartphones or eyewear. What you see through your tech window is developer content blended with the real world to provide information about what you see. It pushes the limits of photorealism.

  Fig. 20.1. Illustration of augmented reality.

  A lot of market applications utilize AR, such as gaming and advertising. In 2016, people all over the world burned up their smartphones’ battery times in their quest for Pokémon. The game Pokémon GO encouraged a scavenger hunt for Pokémon characters while players learned facts about local landmarks. They held up the phone and used it as a window to see both what was really there and what had been digitally added. In Pokémon GO, you saw your target (augmented) hanging out in the natural environment.

  Before you get frustrated during your next trip to a foreign land because you can't read a sign that directs you to the nearest subway, simply use your smartphone's camera to allow an app to translate it for you. It worked nicely for the Doctor in the Doctor Who episode, “Under the Lake.” In that show, the twelfth version of the Doctor uses his sonic sunglasses as a language translation scanner.2

  WHAT IS VIRTUAL REALITY?

  Oh, the places you'll go!

  —Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

  Virtual reality (VR) creates an illusion of being somewhere you are not. The “virtual” in VR means it's all an illusion. The worlds we create using this technology can be so much bigger than the physical world in which we live. The created space can be bigger than the Milky Way even though the device that creates the space is the size of an Xbox. The only limitation on the size of our creation is human imagination.

  Now that I think about it (and I bet you have also), I would enjoy having my illusions brought directly to me on my own personal holodeck. Federation crew members in Star Trek: The Next Generation frequent the holodeck for fun and fancy. Except for the “solidness” of the holodeck fantasies, the technology for the VR experience more or less exists today.

  WHEN DID THE SCIENCE OF VIRTUAL REALITY BEGIN?

  In the early 1880s, scientists figured out how the brain processes the separate 2-D images that are viewed by each eye to render a single mental 3-D image. Devices that took advantage of this picture-processing trickery such as the stereoscopic viewer, including the popular View-Master (an ancestor of yours probably used one), provided a sense of immersion. In 1929, the first flight simulator was created.3 Instead of pictures, the simulator was controlled by motors that mimicked turbulence and physical feedback resulting from actions taken with the controls.

  Fig. 20.2. Illustration of stereoscopic vision device.

  The next major advance in brain trickery came in 1961 with the first motion-tracking head-mounted display.4 These fancy, oversized goggles provided stereoscopic visual effects along with stereo sound. That's not all. This headset included a magnetic motion-tracking system connected to a camera. Simple head turns moved the remote camera, allowing the user to look around wherever the camera was located. This contraption was called Headsight and was created for remote viewing by the military.

  In 1969, the practical idea of artificial reality was developed. It was much more complex than the simple remote viewing, and computer-generated environments in which multiple users could interact were created. People miles apart could communicate with each other in a computer-generated environment.

  Sound familiar? As in, something you use today? Or something you've seen in the 1999 movie The Matrix, where characters live in a simulated world completely unaware that they aren't living in the real physical world? I'm not saying it could happen, but you might want to review artificial intelligence in chapter 13.

  Two big things happened in 1987. First, the term virtual reality was finally used.5 Second, haptic technology was developed. Haptic technology is clothing (such as a glove) that can mimic the sense of touch during a simulation. The same glove could translate the user's motions into the simulation.

  Today you can be immersed in a virtual world using any of the image-filled goggles on the market. In some VR games, you can wear specially designed clothing that provide tactile experiences that enhance the images floating around in your head. If you choose to go off market, you could make your own VR device. All you need for a headset is a high-resolution screen with a wide field of vision and a fast-reacting screen that refreshes images in real time as your head moves.

  ANY PRACTICAL USES FOR VR UNRELATED TO THE MILITARY AND ENTERTAINMENT?

  Today's VR devices are used for a lot more than first-person shooting games or active (ahem) participation in porn. They are used in medicine, aviation, tourism, and psychological therapy.

  The 1992 movie The Lawnmower Man was an early fictional attempt to show how VR might be used for therapy. Jobe, a mentally challenged greenskeeper, is introduced to VR environments that (unscientifically) improve his intelligence. Somehow using the computer connectivity of the early 1990s, he gains power over all linked devices. And because it is a movie, mayhem ensues.

  VR exposure therapy is a real thing. It is being studied as a treatment to relieve symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).6 Patients confront their traumatic memories through virtual exposure. This type of virtual exposure can also be used to treat phobias.

  Exposure therapy in the form of storytelling can be used to foster empathy toward others…which is perfect for VR stories. For example, Perspective; Chapter 1: The Party, created by Morris May and Rose Troche in 2015, allows a viewer wearing goggles to experience sexual assault at a frat party from the man's and woman's perspective.7 Perhaps this type of storytelling can be incorporated into college orientation week.

  CAN FALSE MEMORIES BE CONSIDERED VIRTUAL REALITY?

  False memories represent something that did not really happen, and yet a person can feel as if he lived through it. Philip K. Dick wrote a short story for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1966. “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” is about a clerk for the West Coast Emigration Bureau who is bored with his life. He is unable to afford his dream of visiting Mars, so he opts for the cheaper alternative of having memories of him having been there implanted…only to discover that he really had been to Mars.

  He follows the clues in his past as more real memories return. Like many of Philip K. Dick's stories, this is a wild trip into what reality actually might be. The story was adapted to film in 1990 as Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. A remake of Total Recall starring Colin Farrell was made in 2012; that version keeps the story terrestrial by dropping the Mars angle.
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br />   Imagination plays a big role in the creation of a false memory. In a cautionary study out of Stanford University, researchers were able to show how false memories can be prompted in children by a third party using VR technology.8 This technology could be used in marketing, or perhaps someday false memories will provide children with skills (from supposedly already knowing it) quicker than traditional instruction.

  WHAT ABOUT ERASING MEMORIES?

  Instead of false memories being added, what if original memories could be removed? How would that affect a person's sense of reality? The movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind plays on the idea that memories can be erased; in this case, the erasure is attempted after a romantic relationship ends.

  The story has both ethical quandaries and brain science that isn't too far off. The science to end a memory exists, but being able to selectively choose which memory to zap is still science fiction. Unless the Men in Black really do have a mind-wiping magic wand. Below are a couple of drug treatments currently being studied to erase memories.

  After a compound called ZIP (short for zeta-pseudosubstrate inhibitory peptide) was injected into the hippocampus of a rat, an earlier fear of being shocked while on a slow-spinning carousel experiment was erased. In the experiment, each time the rat rotated past a particular point, the critter was shocked. It learned to turn around and head in the opposite direction. After the injection, it forgot about the shock and enjoyed the carousel ride.9 Long-term memory is often considered the process of neurons firing simultaneously (or nearly simultaneously). The activity develops a bond that will likely make them fire together in the future. For example, the neuron that has encoded a particular scent can be associated with the neuron that causes you to tear up.