From: tim@gold.iss.nus.sg (Tim Poston)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: The nano-rag trade
Date: 11 Nov 92 22:01:10 GMT
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore


A nascent technology should be tried out on applications that are
(1) relatively straightforward
(2) not life-critical in case of failure
(3) highly lucrative

Number (3) may sound evil to those who see nanotech as a path to
universal plenty, and the end to capitalism as we know it; but we're
not there yet, and full development of nanotech will require enormous
resources --- not least in man-centuries of debugging time.  (Think
about debugging a complex routine whose logic is partly in the
structure of the machine, always changed by the addition of
bug-detectors.)  The early applications should accumulate capital that
will provide those resources.

I suggest that this can start with the fashion industry.  It was
changed a lot by technology a few decades ago (zippers, nylon,...) but
what technology-driven changes in basic look have happened lately?
You can still wear the clothes that went with the first transistor
radios.

I list below a few simple jobs that nanotech, and only nanotech, can
do, and that could raise $(1/nano).


     Wavy Hair

Simple machines attach themselves all along each hair, on one side
only.  (This could be by cooperation rules, each seeking to be on the
same side as the next along, or by a rule like `seek the currently
shady side' while deciding where to attach.)  Each one attaches at two
nearby points, and can pull/push on the attachments, putting bending
stress on the hair.  It is programmed to bend slowly this way then
that, but there's a quiet `ready to bend' stage in the cycle when a
neighbour starting up can trigger it start too, a fraction of a second
later.  The result is active bulk waves of hair, moving gently along
the tresses.

Sure beats a static perm.

Other hair tricks would be attaching long hairs to short ones,
building long new hairs on the ends of short ones, attaching hairs
direct to the skin (say, planting them inside natural hair follicles).
This wouldn't just deal with male pattern baldness; it could return us
to the decently furred condition of the other anthropoids.  (Naked
skin doesn't look so bad on Africans and Amerinds, but the plucked
blotchy look of Europeans such as myself is purely regrettable.  There
is a short post-pubertal interval, for a few females, when the skin
looks good; otherwise, yeugh.)



    Wavy Fabrics

`Chameleon' nanomachines settle in cloth.  They could imitate
background colour or skin colour (when that's good --- see above), or
oscillate between two bright colours.  [The colour change could be
either by folding/unfolding self-parts of particular colours, or more
elegantly by changing the molecular geometry to alter the colours
absorbed/reflected.]  With a similar `follow-my-neighbour' reaction to
the hair benders above, you would get colour waves going through the
cloth; but now in two dimensions, so there could be spreading rings,
or the wonderful spirals observed in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical
waves (and the heart, and luminous sea bacteria, and...)

An alternative to colour change would be to occupy the pores of a very
gauzy fabric; the machines could either puff up to block the pores, or
shrink to leave them near-transparent.  Waves of transparency moving
across the body (you can choose the speed and the wavelength) have
possibilities...



    Clothes Fastenings

Zips are better than buttons, but not much.  How about nanomachinery
that, when triggered at the bottom of an opening, reweaves the cloth
all the way up, so you can't see the opening was ever there?  Unweaves
it again to get you out.

The visible zipper, even the detectable seam, could become as big a
no-no as the visible panty-line, in some contexts.  Brutally and
visibly sewn clothes like jeans will probably always have a macho or
nostalgic appeal, but think about how buttons are already following
mediaeval fastening-cords into obscurity.

There is a more safety-critical version of this one: spacesuit
fastenings.  Spacesuit surfaces get a lot of UV, but the machines need
not show themselves at that stage.  I've seen it argued that a bulky
suit should be replaced by an outfit _so_ skintight that it provides
1atmosphere of pressure difference to support the skin against vacuum,
so that the tiny blood vessels don't burst, but with pores so you can
sweat through it and stay cool.  The obstacle has always been to make
such a suit that you can actually put on.  With nanofastenings and
tension controllers, it could put itself on you, and even sense when
you get back in atmosphere and relax the supportive tension.  Suits
like that would make you far less clumsy, in space.

With mutual reweaving around the genital areas, there is a _lot_ you
could do out there.


Those are just a few preliminary thoughts about the possibilities.  I
don't know _how_ possible, but I'm sure that some are easier, and
possible a lot sooner, than tunneling deep through the earth.
(Working in molten rock, when the energy load of UV is already a
worry?  Building tunnels that _must_not_ collapse?)  Timetable,
anybody?

Tim Poston

______________________________________________________________________________
"You call those guesses `opinions'?          Institute of Systems Science
 YOU are responsible, if you share them."    National University of Singapore
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^