GENOMICON

I’ve got this theory that every stupid idea is a great idea waiting to happen – all it takes is a different perspective.

So it is with bristlebots - I’ve touched on this before with the thing where the bristlebot turned into a possible engine for a space elevator.

Well another one’s turned up. Making a tiny bristlebot to deliver drugs to tumours.

(from : via)

It’s about 1mm wide by 1cm long and is powered with an external vibrating magnetic field. Apparently there’s plans to mount a camera on it, which is something I went on about before, and everyone thought I was mad etc. Microbial Safari.

Of course this particular robot is a direct nick from nature – foxtails which (in NZ at least) are the bane of dog owner’s lives because they get stuck between their toes, and like these robots, can only go in one direction – deeper.

Nasty little shits they are. Quite intriguing to play with though – they’re actually covered in micro-barbs to accentuate the affect. Kindof like one-way velcro.

3D printing of bones – or more accurately, bone-scaffolds, upon which real bone can grow… not quite lizard like limb replacement, but certainly a step in that direction.

“EXACT replicas of a man’s thumb bones have been made for the first time using a 3D printer. The breakthrough paves the way for surgeons to replace damaged or diseased bones with identical copies built from the patients’ own cells.

“In theory, you could do any bone,” says Christian Weinand of the Insel Hospital in Berne, Switzerland, head of the team that copied his thumb bones. “Now I can put spares in my pocket if I want,” he says.”

from New Scientist : via nextbigfuture.com

And of course the other thing about the fact that the future is now moving too fast to make reasonable predictions about, is that some predictions have already happened before you get a chance to predict them…

… so when I went on about doctors using remote robot exoskeletons for surgery… well obviously someone’s already doing it.

(from www.spectrum.ieee.org)

Holy crap. Does it have to look so much like… “A Machine For Doing Things To People”? Less insectoid? It looks like a less finessed version of Darth Vader’s torture machine from Empire Strikes Back. A machine for inducing heart-attacks.

But anyway, there it is. My predictions are becoming too slow for reality. I’ll see if I can find one on Youtube.

Oh. Right. Only about a thousand of them.

You can do origami with them as well.

One day of course… maybe within the time that it takes for you to require the attentions of this machine, it will seem medieval and barbaric. If we live.