In considering these products, we are reminded of another set of laws—those formulated by technology historian Melvin Kranzberg. The first of Kranzberg's Laws is: Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
The nanoparticles of zinc oxide in sunscreen are good because they prevent skin damage from ultraviolet radiation. But that's not the end of the story. Nanoparticles don't act the same way as larger particles of the same compound. What happens when they encounter your skin cells? Do they present new health risks? People aren't sure about that and many feel that we must evaluate the possible health risks.
Each new technology, however mundane, opens up new possibilities. And the technologies that are emerging from the efforts of researchers working at the nanoscale open up possibilities that tax even the imagination of a science fiction writer (or so Pat says).
It's difficult to spot the beginning of a technological revolution. If you had been at London's Great International Exhibition in 1862, you might have seen some objects made of a moldable material called Parkesine, the first synthetic plastic. No one who saw those samples predicted the uses to which plastics would later be put. Creation of the first integrated circuit in 1958 set off developments in the electronics industry that led to the modern information revolution. But back in 1958, no one would have predicted the cell phone, the laptop computer, the Gameboy, and the many other electronic devices that dominate our lives.
Like these earlier technological changes, nanotechnology has the potential to spark revolutionary changes in how people live their lives. This article describes just a few of the applications of nanotechnology that are currently being explored in laboratories worldwide. Talk to researchers and for every application named here you'll get a hundred more. They won't all come to fruition, but even if one in a thousand does, the world will be a different place.
Plenty of Room at the Bottom
Back in 1959, Richard Feynman delivered a talk titled “There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom—An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics” (www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html). Most people identify this speech to the American Physical Society as the first mention of some of the distinguishing concepts in nanotechnology. Feynman was a Nobel Prize winner, a bongo player, a troublemaker, and a genius. In this talk, he discussed the opportunities and promises of manipulating and controlling things on a very small scale.
The first step in any revolution is imagining a different world. That was the step that Feynman took. In the course of his lecture, Feynman predicted: “In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction."
But there's a simple reason people didn't immediately begin working at the nanoscale back then. They didn't have the tools.
The first tool they needed was something that let them observe and measure that nanoscale world. That came along in 1981, in the form of the scanning tunneling microscope, the first in a group of instruments called scanning probe microscopes. Rather than using light to look at a sample, a scanning probe microscope feels a sample by dragging a very sharp probe across it. The forces that the probe feels are recorded and the data used to make a picture of the surface at the atomic level. With the scanning probe microscope, researchers could make pictures of atoms for the first time.
Second, researchers needed something that let them manipulate that nanoscale world. It turns out that the scanning probe microscope could do that, too. The probe that was used to feel the surface could be used to manipulate single atoms and molecules, allowing people to rearrange the structure of matter atom-by-atom. In 1989, Don Eigler of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, used individual xenon atoms to spell out I-B-M, demonstrating for the first time that it's possible to build structures at the atomic level.
The third tool isn't as obvious as the first two. To work with the stuff in this tiny world, you need to be able to see it and move it around. What's not as obvious is that you need to create models of what might be possible there. For a variety of reasons, it's not possible to predict, design, or analyze many of the features of the nanoscale world without computer modeling made possible by supercomputers.
These three tools have made the current nanotechnology revolution possible.
* * * *
The Exploratorium is San Francisco's museum of science, art, and human perception—where science and science fiction meet. Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty both work there. To learn more about Pat Murphy's science fiction writing, visit her website at www.brazenhussies.net/murphy. For more on Paul Doherty's work and his latest adventures, visit www.exo.net/~pauld. For more about nanotechnology, check out the website that Pat and Paul were working on when they wrote this: www.nisenet.org
[Back to Table of Contents]
Telefunken Remix by A. A. Attanasio
Mr. Attanasio notes that this is a prolific time in his career with the recent release of Twice Dead Things, a collection of outr fiction and experimental prose—and two new novels: Killing with the Edge of the Moon, a contemporary Celtic fantasy, and The Conjure Book, a 13-year-old girl's misadventures with a 400-year-old volume of magic spells.
His new story is challenging, complex, and fascinating. If it seems a bit odd at first, stick with it—it will get even odder (but it will all make sense).
* * * *
.— .... .-—.... .- ... —. —- -.. .— .-. —- ..- —. .... -
What has God wrought?
—Samuel F. B. Morse, first telegraph transmission
* * * *
Sierra Tree
... ... ...
Barely audible above the sounds of rain sifting through the bedchamber's oval window, a succession of three short dulcet tones chimes thrice from a headboard alarm clock, and Noel gently rouses from the Bosom. This is what Heavinside calls sleep: the Bosom, from Old English bsm, the place where secret thoughts are kept.
I better not even try to explain that! This is Noel's first thought as he rolls out from his moss hammock and strides two paces into the wash bole. While relieving himself at the commode, he opens burl wood louvers and watches morning peek from under a brim of departing rain clouds. Another lovely day in Saille, a willow town of Heavinside. Saille of sylvan swards and swan linns, old suburbs in paradise, croons with bird madrigals and vibrant morning mist from nearby falls. Even this tranquillity can't alleviate his anxious thoughts. Today is the day: the chancy day he departs Heavinside for Errth.
Lilac shadows of sunrise stretch through his heart and darken his mood with the disquieting thought that his doppel won't understand. Noel has already decided to begin by explaining why Heavinside calls the doppel's world Errth instead of Earth. “Your world is an error,” he practices aloud. “Surely, many people in your time intuited correctly that life and the solar system itself were intelligently designed."
Many people in your time.... Noel cringes at his clumsiness. “My time?” his doppel would question—and then how would Noel convincingly convey all that had transpired in the chasm of time that separated them? Should he start off by terrifying his doppel with the fact that the human race had gone extinct long before the species’ broadcasts of radio and television reached the Contexture's nearest monitor in the Andromeda Galaxy?
How much trust then could his doppel invest in the Contexture if the first thing he learned was that a Design flaw had shaped his life? How to spin the fact that the monitor in our Milky Way had malfunctioned and the all-wise Contexture never found out that the third planet circling Sol had engendered sentience—until that wayward species had destroyed itself?
The commode flushes when he stands, a braided current of waste products mewling into the slub chamber while he watches, an idea skittering across his mind. “I'll tell him about the treemerges. Of course. ‘Heavinside grows everything, even our domiciles, our treemerges ... our homes.’ That's the word to use, home. ‘The Contexture designed our homes to care for us.’ Use common words to explain unf
amiliar ones.” Noel's inspiration absorbs his attention, and he continues out loud, glad for the confident vigor in his voice, “Let me tell you about biotecture and how it fits everything together, including effluent.'” He pauses. Will he know that word? “Better say sewage. ‘What you flush away not only furthers the growth of your own treemerge but also informs it about your health so that your home grows the precise nutrients you require.’ Right. Start there. Home. That'll put him at ease."
The reflecting pool in the wash bole reflects a lean youth with narrow, bony shoulders, pale as a chesspiece. Noel scrutinizes his mirror image, knowing his doppel will look very much as he does, with lanky dun hair swept back from a brow orthogonal as marble, green eyes browned like baked turf, abbreviated eyebrows, mere tufts, an umlaut above that shapeless tuber of a nose, and those cupid lips, almost fey, but for his jaw wide as a boomerang.
The rain grumbles a distant farewell. “'Hello. I am Noel. I am yourself—your clone—two million years from now.'” Stupid, he scolds himself—then, depresses a knurled wood lever, releasing a brisk spray from the cache of rain his treemerge had collected. “'Hello, I'm Noel. Two million years from now, the Designer who misplaced your galaxy will find your shoulder-blade. I'm the memory of you made from that bone.’”
Sunlight sifts like sawdust through the branches. Under a canopy of willow withes, Noel sits cross-legged on matted turf gazing quietly at his inamorata, memorizing her features, aware he may never see her again. This is their last intimacy. Ny'a looks back at him tightly, straightening the pleats of her tunic. Her sibylline beauty surges with intelligence, irises black as if woven of darkness spun out from those watchful pupils. “What if I don't like him?"
"He's me.” Noel sounds aggrieved and stops lacing his breeches. How many times has he explained this? “We're identical."
"Genetically.” The plaintive edge to her voice sharpens. How many times has she pointed this out? “He's not you. He's a doppel."
"You'll like him.” He sighs from far down in the hollow where he's fitting her memory. “He needs you to like him."
Ny'a leans forward. “What if he doesn't like me?"
"No chance of that.” He takes both her hands. “No one on all of Errth is as beautiful as you.” That was objectively true. “You're a templet—beauty herself."
"Then why are you leaving me?"
He could offer a defeated mutter—"I'm not a templet."—but doesn't have to.
Those eyes of spun darkness peer into him, trying to locate whoever is home. “You're an anamnestic. So what?"
"Yeah.” Even the name is ugly. Anamnestic—anamnestic. It sounds like sneezing.
Ny'a addresses him through an intransigent scowl, “How do you think your doppel is going to feel when you strand him here?"
"After what he's been through—fabulous!” This is the part of the routine where he justifies his reasons. But the discussion won't end until he justifies his heart. That's all she cares about. These past twelve moons, while she helped with preparations for the transfer, they had modulated this argument numerous ways. He frowns as if reading the cryptic weave of shadow from under the willow's bell. “His life is accidental. The ones who succeed on Errth are designing men and women. Buying and selling with skill and greed stronger than love. The rest drift, buffeted by events. I'm sure he's one of them."
"So?” Emotion throttles her voice. “That was two million years ago, Noel. He's not hurting."
"I am, Ny'a.” He notices he's been squeezing her hands, releases them and stands. “You know compassion compels us.” Her pointed stare directs him to continue the routine. Today the words mean more, because they are final. “I have a treemerge. I have you. I have all Heavinside to prepare me for success on Errth. How can I leave him there when he has none of these advantages?"
"You have a place here—with me."
"You're a templet. You belong in Heavinside. Me ... well, look at me. I'm a memory of Errth, a crisis of imprecision."
"What is that supposed to mean?” She leans back on her elbows, gazing up at him with those midnight eyes. She decides to skip the tired argument that “anamnestics make our culture stronger” and goes straight to the obvious truth: “Doppels have it harder here.” She doesn't have to explain. Doppels remember Errth—and, in Heavinside, that's always a trauma. Some treemerges never manage to calm their new hosts without wiping memories. All the while, the doppel is useless in the Bosom.
And that's the real difficulty. That's why the design managers discourage exchanges. The managers are the good neighbors from hyperspace, from the Contexture, who call themselves Sierra Tree, a name they think sounds simian-friendly. Interchanges between Heavinside and Errth are a complex, maddening process for design managers and the templet, a burden too dubious for anything but love to bear. Of course, Ny'a does love him. The Contexture designed her specifically to love him, and with a woeful huff she pushes to her feet, effectively terminating her dissent. “So, I'm trading a crisis of imprecision for a precise crisis. Lucky me."
His smile brokers her disapproving frown to a joke on himself. “I'm the one who's going to need luck."
"Is that what the Tree told you?” A sweep of her arm parts willow withes like draperies, disclosing an afternoon tending toward amber and a storybook vista of varied terrain, surging hills with treemerges among conifer woods, heather tracts and sky lakes. “They tell you to take your luck with you?"
"Again and again. This first trip is preliminary. They need to set their calipers. ‘Do I accept the stochastic hazard of zero portal travel? Do I realize that if vacuum fluctuations deviate from the calibrations even slightly....’ Well then, it's breakfast with the dinosaurs for me.” He takes her hand, and they stroll from sequined shadows into brash sunlight. “Luck—that's a sphinx with sharp claws!"
* * * *
The rising red moon impersonates a vast furnace. Noel kisses Ny'a, and she presses hard against him. “We love each other,” she whispers sharp with spit and body heat against his cheek, then pushes into his palm something hard and cool. “For luck."
"Zero portal open!” Design managers speak from a safe distance, cloaked in night among the ponderosas. “Liminal boundary fifteen minutes!—Go now!"
An afflicted glance over his shoulder fixes on plastinated faces watching impassively from the forest's dark apertures. Those glyptic masks promise no mercy if he doesn't return after fifteen minutes on Errth—then, pffft!—the very strings that weave his atoms unravel ... and nothing of him will remain, not even a ghost imprint in the vacuum.
A last look burns between Noel and Ny'a, and he turns to the zero portal. It is an empty glade where moonlight punches through the trees. He advances tentatively, heart shaking, head held high like a blind man—until the design managers shout, “Go now! Now, Noel! Now!"
He rushes forward across springy grass. Moonlight crests like a wave. For a reeling moment, he feels motherless and welded to sorrow. The next instant, macadam smacked the soles of his sandals. Halogen light smothered the moon. And a curdled reek of sewer and river ammonia hooked his sinuses. The field and enclosing ponderosas were gone, replaced by cathedral vaults under a massive bridge. A choir of pigeons sat in drowsy attendance along spans of high steel scaffolding and, in the distance, the electric necklace of another colossal bridge.
A lone figure in sneakers, baggy denims, and a dark hooded jacket leaned on an iron railing under visionary lamplight. When Noel emerged from slant shadows thrown down by the bridge's giant stanchions, the solitary river-watcher turned and staggered aside so violently his hood flew back, revealing a frightened reflection of Noel, identical except for shaved temples and a rusty stripe of chin whiskers.
"What the—"
"Don't be afraid.” Noel came out of the dark wearing his Heavinside apparel, a wide-necked blouse of silver panes, pale breeches thewed and braided with knotcord, sandals intricately laced. Orange lamplight diffusing off that monochrome fabric made him look like an archaic, bereaved ghost, l
ong hair afloat upon the river wind. “I'm not going to hurt you."
"Yo—don't come no closer!"
Noel stopped on the sooty cobbles. “I don't have much time."
"Damn!” The doppel expelled shock in a heightened whisper, eyes buzzed, body twisting full to one side ready to kick off. “This is whack! Who are you?"
"I'm Noel.” Trying to throw him a smile, Noel grimaced. “I'm your clone."
The word flew right by him. “Noel? You my twin or something?"
"Something like that.” Noel lifted his chin and extended his right hand, intending to ask, ‘What's your name?’ Instead, the doppel backed away as if Noel had raised a bruise-knuckled fist, muttering, “I got no twin.” And, too late, after gravity made its claim, Noel recalled the small, hard object Ny'a had slipped into his palm.
Clinking clear as ice, a jade coin bounced on the dirty cobbles. For luck, Ny'a had said, and he gaped at ... well, the name for this object is an obscenity in Heavinside: obol. Every templet has one. A metastasis obol—infinity-in-a-thimble, bride-to-God, fate's coin. It connects the templet directly to the Contexture. Such intimacy with the Designer imparts experiences so transhuman language fails—and when templets force into words these intimacies, when they speak aloud their observations from hyperspace of our organic existence, they offend bluntly: Mind is the rutted track of Context.—A pouch of hungry ghosts, such is life.—The filthiest body part is the mouth, and everything spoken is filth. Templets learn to avoid discussing the Contexture, people don't ask, and the obol usually adheres to a less filthy and customarily hidden body part.
Beyond the vulgarity of Ny'a's obol rolling on the ground, Noel's heart hit a gallop because he knew that the Contexture could not regulate Ny'a's biokinesis without it on her person. She would die in days.
FSF Magazine, May 2007 Page 15