She was still in the padded chair and, despite all the visual disorientation, had no trouble swinging it to face the window. Her perspective shifted, and she could feel the breeze on her face again, and smell that one of her neighbors was using a fireplace. She knew that the window frame was rectangular, knew that it was divided into a lower and upper square by a crosspiece. Surely she would recognize those simple shapes as she looked at them, and—
But no. No. What she was seeing now was a—what words to use?—a radial pattern, three lines of different colors converging on a single point.
She got up from the chair, moved to the window, and stood before it, grasping one side of the frame in each hand. And then she stared ahead, forcing her concentration onto what must be in front of her. She knew she should be seeing lines perpendicular to the floor and others parallel to it. She knew the frame was twice as tall as the crosspiece.
But what she saw bore no relationship—none!—to what she expected. Instead of anything that resembled the window frame, she was still seeing the radial lines stretching away, and—
Strange. When she moved her head, the view did change, as if she were now looking somewhere else. The center point of all the intersecting lines was now off to one side, and—oh, my!—another such grouping was coming into view on the other side, but the lines didn't seem to correspond to anything in her bedroom.
But wait! It was night now. Yes, the room lights had doubtless been on when her father had been here, but he was serious about saving electricity, forever complaining that Caitlin's mom had left lights on in the kitchen or bathroom—something, fortunately, she never had to worry about being blamed for. He surely would have turned the lights off when he left. (Bashira had said it was creepy that Caitlin's dad did that, but, really, it was sensible ... wasn't it?) She couldn't remember hearing the tiny sound of the switch when he left, but he must have used it—and so the room must be dark now, and what she was seeing were just (again a concept she had never experienced) shadows, or something like that.
She turned, her strange view wheeling as she did so. It was disconcerting and disorienting; she'd crossed this room hundreds of times, but she was having trouble walking because of the distraction. Still, the room wasn't that big, and it took only seconds to find the light switch. It was pointing down, but she wasn't sure if that was the position for on or off. She moved it up, and—
Nothing. No change. No new flash of light—nor any dimming of what she was already seeing.
And then she was hit by a thought that should have already occurred to her. Vision was supposed to be at the user's discretion; surely she could shut all this out just by closing her eyes, and—
And nothing.
No difference. The lights, the lines, the colors were all still there. Her heart fell. Whatever she was seeing had no relation to external reality; no wonder she hadn't been able to recognize the window frame. She opened and closed her eyes a couple more times, just to be sure, and flicked the room light on and off (or perhaps off and on!) a few more times, as well.
Caitlin slowly made her way back to her bed and sat on its edge. She'd felt momentarily dizzy as she crossed the room, distracted by the lights, and she lay down, her face pointing up at the ceiling she'd never seen.
She tried to make sense of what she was seeing. If she held her head still, the same part of the image did stay in the ... the center. And there was a limit to what she could see—things off to the sides were out of her ... her ... field of view, that was it. Clearly this bizarre show of lights was behaving like vision, behaving as though it were controlled by her eyes, even if the images she was experiencing didn't have anything to do with what those eyes should be seeing.
Some lines seemed to persist: there was a big one of a darkish color she decided to provisionally call “red,” although it almost certainly wasn't that. And another—might as well call it “green"—crossed it near the center of her vision. Those lines seemed to stay put overhead; whenever she directed her eyes toward the ceiling, they were there.
She'd read about people's vision adapting to darkness, so that stars (how she would love to see stars!) slowly became more visible. And although she still didn't know if she was in the dark or in a brightly lit room, as time passed she did seem to be seeing increasing amounts of detail—a finer and more complex filigree of crisscrossing colored lines. But what was causing it? And what did it represent?
She was unused to ... what was it now? That phrase she'd read on those websites about vision Kuroda had directed her to, the phrase that was so musical? She frowned, and it came to her: confabulation across saccades. Human eyes swing in continuous arcs when switching from looking at point A to point B, but the brain shuts off the input, perhaps to avoid dizziness, while the eyes are repositioning. Instead of getting swish pans—a term she'd encountered in an article about filmmaking—vision is a series of jump cuts: instantaneous changes from looking at this to looking at that, with the movement of the eye edited out of the conscious experience. The eye normally made several saccades each second: rapid, jerky movements.
The big cross she was seeing now—red in one arm, green in the other—jumped instantaneously in her perception as she moved her eyes, shunting to her peripheral vision (another term finally understood) when she looked away. She did it again and again, flicking back and forth, and—
And suddenly she was plunged into blackness.
Caitlin gasped. She felt as though she were falling, even though she knew she wasn't. The loss of the enigmatic lights was heartbreaking; she'd crawled her way up after fifteen years of deprivation only to be kicked back down into the pit.
Her body sagged against the bedding while she hoped—prayed!—that the lights would return. But, after a full minute, she pulled herself to her feet and walked to her desk, undistracted now by flashes, her paces falling automatically one after another. She touched her Braille display. “Download complete,” she read. “Connection closed."
Caitlin felt her heart pounding. Her vision had stopped when the connection via her eyePod between her retinal implant and the Internet had shut down, and—
A crazy thought. Crazy. She turned on her screen reader, and used the tab key to move around the Web page Kuroda had created, listening to snippets of what was written in various locations. But what she wanted wasn't there. Finally, desperately, she hit alt and the left arrow on her keyboard to return to the previous page, and—
Bingo! “Click here to update the software in Miss Caitlin's implant.” She could feel her hand shaking as she positioned her index finger above the enter key.
Please, she thought. Let there be light.
She pressed the key.
And there was light.
To be continued.
Copyright (c) 2008 Robert J. Sawyer
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Science Fact: THE 3D TRAINWRECK: HOW 3D PRINTING WITH SHAKE UP MANUFACTURING by Thomas A. Easton
Have you ever needed to replace the knobs on a kitchen range, washing machine, or dryer? Has the dog ever chewed your kid's favorite toy into a wad of mangled plastic? Have you ever broken a false tooth?
Those knobs look pretty simple, but they can be hard to find and expensive. The toy can be replaced, but only if it's still on the market. The dentist will be happy to replace the tooth, for a fat fee. When you face these truths, you can feel like your life has gone a bit out of control. If only you could just push a button and take the knobs you need or a duplicate of the mangled toy or broken tooth out of a hopper, life would be so much simpler. You'd be in control, instead of a system that often seems designed to frustrate you and/or suck money out of your pocket.
There's no such button now, but soon ... The wonders of technology are about to give
you more control over your life than ever before. At the same time, they are about to knock major sectors of the economy spinning. If you don't see it coming, your retirement fund could pop like a kid's balloon. But if you do see it coming, and you put your money in the right place, you could get rich. You could also have a lot of fun.
History is about to repeat itself. 3D printing or rapid prototyping[1] is now moving from industry to the home with the potential to change the way we live at a very fundamental level. The last time this happened was in the 1970s, when computers were huge, expensive, and used only by large organizations. But that was when the first primitive personal computers appeared. At the time the PC was of interest mainly to geeky hobbyists. But within twenty years, people were beginning to communicate, work, play, shop, socialize, and even steal online. Today e-mail is as routine as breathing, e-commerce is a major sector of the economy, telework is a serious alternative for millions of workers, online gaming is a major industry, and people worry about scamming, phishing, and identity theft. If you're typical, you spend time in chatrooms. You visit online dating bureaus such as eHarmony.com to find the perfect mate. You even get college degrees online!
It was noted years ago that technology has both good and bad effects, and they cannot be separated. If we call the suburb a good effect of the automobile, that led inescapably to commuting and the traffic jam. The contrast between good and bad is greatest for those new technologies called “disruptive technologies.” Such technologies change the rules. They destroy businesses. They make industries and jobs obsolete. They can even cut the funds available to governments to support schools and maintain roads or—as in the case of the automobile—force government to find the funds to pay for new services (such as roads). In severe cases, it is not unreasonable to compare the impact of such a technology to a trainwreck, for an enormous amount of damage can be done. At the same time, however, there are more positive effects. As businesses, industries, and jobs go away, new ones appear, and historically the new ones more than make up for the old ones that have vanished. It may take time, and the transition period may be painful, but it happens.
Venture capitalists, investors, marketers, and planners in both business and government are very interested in identifying emerging and disruptive technologies. A likely one, after all, represents a great investment! If it means new products, entrepreneurs and marketers want to know. If it means old practices will no longer work, planners want to know. Writers for technology magazines and trade journals therefore pay considerable attention to new or emerging technologies and draw attention to some by calling them disruptive. So far only a few people are talking about 3D printing as one such technology, but 3D printing bids fair to be at least as disruptive as the personal computer.
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What Is 3D Printing?
Think of an object—any object!—as a series of slices. A 3D printer (also known as a “fabber") prints the slices, one on top of another, until it produces (or “fabs") the whole object. For “ink” or raw material, it uses powders (rather like copier toner) or liquid plastics or even pastes. It has a technique to solidify the ink as each layer is laid down. If there is internal structure—hollow spaces, pieces of different colors or consistency—that is all faithfully reproduced. And that's it. The technique is being used to make architectural models, custom motorcycle parts, custom dental implants, and many more things.2 Researchers are even using 3D printers to make synthetic bone for repairing breaks and developing techniques to make pieces of tissue (and eventually organs such as liver or muscle) to use as transplants. If that scales up, it may be possible decades from now to “fab” an entire body. Dr. Frankenstein would love it!
So far, 3D printers are like the first PCs. They didn't have the software, attached hardware, power, hard drives, speed, memory, or sheer versatility that we take for granted today. But those first PCs were still nifty gadgets. You could play games, do simple word-processing, and even write programs to make them do new things (some of which made their writers rich). And today ... It's amazing how far the PC has come!
At the moment, the 3D printer is pretty limited. But like the first PCs, it's a nifty gadget. In fact, it's nifty enough for some people to build their own. Windell H. Oskay, known online as the “Evil Mad Scientist,” used recycled printer parts to build a “candyfab.” His raw material was plain old granulated sugar. To make it stick together, he used a modified hair dryer (which blew air hot enough to melt the sugar). What he made was such things as a wood screw 20 inches long. It would crumble if anyone tried to screw it into a piece of wood, but at least it looked like a screw. Sort of. It wasn't as polished as a metal wood screw; in fact, if it were an image on a computer screen, you would call it “pixelly” or say it had a bad case of the “jaggies.” But his system worked, and as he says, “Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories exists primarily for fun, not profit. We like to design and build stuff, cook and eat stuff, and take pictures of our cats."3
Like the candyfab, most 3D printers are limited to working with a single raw material. Many of the things we might like to print out or “fab” are made of multiple materials, so we can't print them—yet. For the present, we are limited to printing things that are made of single materials. All we need is the right “ink,” and we can make plastic toys, Halloween vampire teeth, Christmas tree decorations, fancy switch plates, and doorknobs (and other interior decorating bits and pieces). To this, add replacement knobs for kitchen ranges, art objects, chocolate figurines (yes, Virginia, there's a 3D printer that can use chocolate as ink), and much, much more. In the not-too-distant future, we should be able to make replacement lenses for eyeglasses, false teeth, and maybe even flip-flops and shoes. Multi-ink machines exist now for use in industry and are being developed for home use; once home machines can use multiple raw materials, there will be no theoretical limit on what you can make. Not just eyeglass lenses, but whole eyeglasses. Not just a statuette, but a lamp with wires and switches. Eventually, you may even be able to print out a new cell phone to replace the one you ran over with your car.
Once the technology has matured, you will be able to make just about anything that fits inside your printer. It sounds like science fiction—in fact, it sounds a lot like a classic replicator! But the day is coming when you will no longer have to go to the store when you need a replacement part for an appliance, a new head (or leg) for a broken doll, a specially shaped piece for a hobby project, a holiday decoration, or a thousand other items. Some of these items might be hard to find. Some, like eyeglass lenses or false teeth, might be expensive to buy and cheap to make at home. Some might be your own unique designs, and you may even be able to sell the designs the way early PC users sold software.
Does a 3D printer have to be small? A University of Southern California engineering professor, Behrokh Khoshnevis, is developing a “contour crafting” device (www.contourcrafting.org), essentially a very large 3D printer, mounted on a crane or gantry, that can use semi-liquid construction materials such as concrete and plaster to build houses—and even paint the interior walls—much more rapidly and cheaply than can construction workers. Applications for the technique include constructing low-income housing, commercial buildings, shelter for disaster refugees, and the necessary buildings for lunar colonies.
3D printers will eventually come in many sizes, use many raw materials, and be able to make a huge variety of items. The consumer will be happy. But new technologies always deliver both plusses and minuses. In this case the minuses appear as soon as we consider that if we are making things at home, those who previously made them in factories for sale in stores will have little left to do. Businesses and even industries will be forced to shut down or drastically change their way of doing business. Workers will lose jobs or be obliged to learn new jobs. And state and municipal governments will not see the funds they are accustomed to receiving from sales taxes (nationwide, sales taxes supply almost a third of state budgets). These funds are used to provide vital public service
s (such as schools, fire departments, and police). E-commerce is already blamed for reducing sales tax revenue, and 3D printing will make the shortfall worse. Of course, any significant reduction will have to be replaced somehow.
These negative impacts affect businesses, workers, and governments. They will be serious. They are therefore three dimensions of a crisis that can easily be called a social and economic trainwreck. However, history shows that society has survived such crises before. After a period of adjustment, the benefits will remain, and the pain will be only in memory.
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3D History
Until the early 1800s, machines such as rifles had to be made one at a time by skilled craftsmen, with all the parts individually shaped and fitted together. This meant that guns were in limited supply and expensive. It also meant that if you broke a part, you couldn't just take the matching part from another gun of the same make and model and use that. It probably would not fit. But Eli Whitney, later to become famous for inventing the cotton gin, realized that it was possible to make interchangeable parts and promised the young U.S. government that he could deliver 10,000 muskets in 28 months for a remarkably low price. Thomas Jefferson marked his success with the words, “He has invented moulds and machines for making all the pieces of his [musket] so exactly equal that [if one were to] take 100 [muskets] to pieces and mingle their parts and the hundred [muskets] may be put together as well by taking the first pieces which come to hand.” The invention of a way to make interchangeable parts helped create the mass production that has marked modern economies ever since. Because it made guns plentiful and cheap, it also helped make America's westward expansion possible in the nineteenth century.
Analog SFF, November 2008 Page 9