Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks at the Future says, tomorrow we can drive around
Speaker 1: this town. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren ba and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be talking about a
Speaker 1: very special subject that's sort of a follow up to
Speaker 1: something we talked about earlier this month. Yeah, on December third,
Speaker 1: we published a podcast called self or podcast episode that
Speaker 1: terminology always wakes me out, anyway, it was called self
Speaker 1: We configuring modular Robots go and they went, and they did, go,
Speaker 1: they did, They went everywhere kind of thing they do, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The concept of that is the the a robot that's
Speaker 1: made up of smaller components, each of which is its
Speaker 1: own robot, right, And so it's sort of an aggregate
Speaker 1: like a transformer, except actually better than a trans former
Speaker 1: because the transformer can only turn into two shapes, maybe
Speaker 1: three for some of them. Sure, sure, but it's basically
Speaker 1: either a car or robot or a gun or a
Speaker 1: robot or etcetera. Right, And so a self reconfiguring modular robot,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, would be able to reshape itself
Speaker 1: into any number of different shapes because it's made of
Speaker 1: identical individual components that can adjust their position and functionality
Speaker 1: with relationship to all the other ones. Right, And we
Speaker 1: talked about a couple of different types. We talked about
Speaker 1: M I, T, S M blocks. We talked about Harvard's kilobots. Now,
Speaker 1: the kilobots are not U modular robots in the same sense,
Speaker 1: but they demonstrate the the swarm behavior that would be necessary,
Speaker 1: the idea that each individual robot would be able to
Speaker 1: move into the correct position to form whatever shape is needed. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're more of a tool to test out that kind
Speaker 1: of technology, that sort of artificial intelligence that will be
Speaker 1: a necessary component it for a true self reconfiguring modular robot. Right,
Speaker 1: because anything that large isn't ultimately going to be as
Speaker 1: useful as as something with parts that are much smaller
Speaker 1: that the smaller the parts, the more useful this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff is going to be. Yeah, And of course,
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned plenty of times on the show, miniaturization
Speaker 1: is hard, especially when you need to power all these elements.
Speaker 1: But let's be optimists for a bit and imagine it's
Speaker 1: going to be weird not for me, And imagine how
Speaker 1: small you could make these modular robotic elements. That was,
Speaker 1: you do not have a very powerful imagination time bandits reference.
Speaker 1: Um no, I want to I want to talk about
Speaker 1: how this applies to a subject known as programmable matter.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's actually talk what is programmable matter. Well,
Speaker 1: programmable matter is matter. It's so it has substance as weight.
Speaker 1: You can hold it in your hands, but it can
Speaker 1: alter its own physical characteristics in a non random way
Speaker 1: based on user input or pre programmed behavior. So yeah,
Speaker 1: where did this idea come from? Well, let's turn back
Speaker 1: the time. Watch the hands of the clock spin backwards. Uh,
Speaker 1: now it was it was the idea itself. The term
Speaker 1: was proposed by Tomaso to Foley and Norman Margolis to
Speaker 1: M I T. Computer scientists. Now, their concept of programmable
Speaker 1: matter was really more about tiny computers that could perform
Speaker 1: parallel processing and communicate with one another, that could simulate
Speaker 1: the physics of real matter. But we're talking about a simulation.
Speaker 1: They weren't replicating. These These small computers in this proposal
Speaker 1: weren't meant to take on physical shapes, but rather be
Speaker 1: able to communicate in a way that would allow them
Speaker 1: to process huge amounts of information very rap Okay, But
Speaker 1: of course subsequently people really expanded on this idea, right,
Speaker 1: We ended up hearing about another approach where they said,
Speaker 1: what if we took the same concept, but instead of
Speaker 1: just talking about computers, we apply it to robotics. So
Speaker 1: each computer is itself a tiny robot that has some
Speaker 1: ability to move around, to communicate, to bind with fellow robots,
Speaker 1: and that they would be able to have a tiny
Speaker 1: processor inside them to to take on commands and then
Speaker 1: enact those commands. And then you could, in theory, have
Speaker 1: this massive robots that could create actual physical structures, larger
Speaker 1: macro structures. So kind of similar to the modular robots
Speaker 1: we talked about before, but on an even smaller scale. Okay,
Speaker 1: but what people are really thinking about today is something
Speaker 1: kind of amazing picture. You've got a little blob of
Speaker 1: gray junk. It's just it looks like putty or goop
Speaker 1: or jam or something. It's just this kind of amorphous
Speaker 1: material jam. But you give it data and so the
Speaker 1: it is actually made of tons of tiny spherical elements
Speaker 1: that are all joined together and all individually have computing capability.
Speaker 1: Somewhere deep inside each of those tiny little particles is
Speaker 1: a circuit and it takes the data you put in
Speaker 1: and says, okay, I need to be over here now
Speaker 1: in relation to this other particle, and they all do
Speaker 1: that at the same time to form a shape. And
Speaker 1: the shape is whatever you tell it, and then if
Speaker 1: you are tired of that shape, you can tell it
Speaker 1: to make a totally different shape and it will pretty creepy. Huh. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's creepy and great. Like this is sort
Speaker 1: of if you want to get really crazy with it.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the T one thousand idea. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's T one thousand meets silly putty, right. Uh. To
Speaker 1: be more realistic, it's sort of like not a fully
Speaker 1: functioning autonomous robot running around in the in the southern
Speaker 1: California area, but it's something that can change its own
Speaker 1: shape at will based on what you want. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: you could think of it kind of as as a
Speaker 1: bunch of uh, you know, modules that can form various structures,
Speaker 1: but the modules themselves are so small that your your
Speaker 1: list of possible structures you can make is in the
Speaker 1: ideal implementation practically unlimited. Yeah. Imagine there as small as
Speaker 1: grains of sand, as if sand could make anything out
Speaker 1: of itself. It's almost as though this is some kind
Speaker 1: of automatically sculpting clay. Yeah, that's a good name for it,
Speaker 1: but you didn't come up with it first, now, I
Speaker 1: did not, not at all. Actually, a one cool name
Speaker 1: for a particular implementation of this idea of programma will
Speaker 1: matter is Claytronics. And you might have heard this term before.
Speaker 1: It's a popular and cool idea and futurism circles. But
Speaker 1: what's behind the actual Claytronics idea. Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: came out of Carnegie, Melon and Intel, along with a
Speaker 1: few other partnerships. There is an actual project. There's a
Speaker 1: great website where they kind of talk about what Claytronics
Speaker 1: is all about and how they hope to achieve it,
Speaker 1: which is is pretty neat um. The project's purpose is
Speaker 1: too and I quote it combines modular robotics, systems, nanotechnology,
Speaker 1: and computer science to create the dynamic three dimensional display
Speaker 1: of electronic information. So think of this as an alternative
Speaker 1: to a computer monitor, right you are? You can actually
Speaker 1: use this to visualize data in a physical form, So
Speaker 1: you could you could in theory. Use this to do
Speaker 1: something as simple as compare the market share of two
Speaker 1: different operating systems and have two physical UH representations pop up,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's a large sphere in a small sphere
Speaker 1: to demonstrate what the two different UH companies are operating
Speaker 1: systems you're looking at how they compare against one another.
Speaker 1: Or you can do something much more complex, like what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, the idea of being able to make
Speaker 1: any particular physical shape and then reshape it just by
Speaker 1: you know, running a program. Right. And so this technology
Speaker 1: is obviously based on the power of the individual particle,
Speaker 1: right that's moving about to create these shapes. And in
Speaker 1: the field of claytronics, this is the claytronic atom, the
Speaker 1: catom it right, and the catom, like a lot of
Speaker 1: the units we're talking about, is modular in that you
Speaker 1: can have that connect with other atoms to make these
Speaker 1: larger shapes, these macro size shapes, right. They don't have
Speaker 1: to be specialized. They're all the same thing. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's not always the case with programmable matter. There
Speaker 1: are other implementations. You know, this was one approach. There's
Speaker 1: another one Cornell's Creative Machines Lab is working on a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways of looking at programmable matter. So
Speaker 1: I gotta keep in mind that we're talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: something that's in its infancy here, so we're still experimenting
Speaker 1: with different approaches to how to get to this kind
Speaker 1: of uh future where we have programmable matter. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that Cornell's Creative Machines Lab is looking
Speaker 1: at is uh using these tiny building blocks that they
Speaker 1: call Vauxell's. These are physical objects that they know Vauxell's
Speaker 1: sort of like pixels. A pixel is an individual unit
Speaker 1: of display on your display. Why am I thinking it
Speaker 1: sounds like an alien from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Speaker 1: Theogans yea with their terrible poetry. Uh, yeah, Vauxell's in
Speaker 1: this case, Yeah, it makes sense because of a single
Speaker 1: Vauxel would be a single unit that, together with other
Speaker 1: vox can make up this physical shape. Just as a
Speaker 1: single pixel is kind of useless. You have to have
Speaker 1: lots of pixels so that you can actually represent whatever
Speaker 1: visual uh image you want to to have on your
Speaker 1: screen like that terminology. Yeah, that's kind of neat. It
Speaker 1: makes it It makes it easier to explain to people, right,
Speaker 1: Like think of it as just as an individual unit.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like an again, just like Claytronics goes
Speaker 1: with the catom, where you think of the atom as
Speaker 1: the individual unit. This is very similar. Uh. Now, these
Speaker 1: building blocks could come in different varieties, so you could
Speaker 1: have vaux holes that are soft or hard. They could
Speaker 1: come in different colors. Some might be conductive, some might
Speaker 1: be insulators, some could have robotic elements like sensors or actuators.
Speaker 1: So you would get an assembler of some type that
Speaker 1: would print out those building blocks whichever ones you needed
Speaker 1: for whatever it was you were playing on building, and
Speaker 1: then you would be able to put it together to
Speaker 1: make the thing you need it to make. So I
Speaker 1: think of it more like tinker toys or legos. You
Speaker 1: would get the different blocks you need, and you look
Speaker 1: at the instructions and then you can build the actual thing.
Speaker 1: So it's a little different from claytronics, where you would
Speaker 1: theoretically be able to change that shape over and over.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly certain that the vauxells would have that
Speaker 1: same capability and may not, but it's again kind of
Speaker 1: a stepping stone toward that programmable matter where you would
Speaker 1: be able to change things on the fly. One of
Speaker 1: the other things I liked about the voxhel approach is
Speaker 1: how they describe building a three D object, that it's
Speaker 1: a digital method as opposed to an analog method. So
Speaker 1: analog you would consider that to be a continuous shape,
Speaker 1: so you know, as curves, as edges, um, and but
Speaker 1: it's all continuous. Digital is there's either matter there or
Speaker 1: there's not. It's a one or zero. So it's sort
Speaker 1: of the difference between you know, a real image and
Speaker 1: a pixelated image on the screen. Yeah. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: would if you were trying to create something, you would say,
Speaker 1: all right, where where to do the individual vox need
Speaker 1: to be? And where do they absolutely not need to be?
Speaker 1: Where do they need to be absent? And uh, you know.
Speaker 1: I've also likened it to the idea of We've talked
Speaker 1: about this with sculpting, where you cut everything that isn't
Speaker 1: the thing you want out, like, cut everything that doesn't
Speaker 1: look like David needs to be cut out of that
Speaker 1: block of granted, until you're left with David or marble.
Speaker 1: I guess I should say, at any rate, what what
Speaker 1: do I know? I'm no artist, um, but anyway, it's
Speaker 1: kind of neat because it's it's that one in zero approach.
Speaker 1: But there are other projects at Cornell that also relate
Speaker 1: to programmable matter. And my favorite one out of all
Speaker 1: of them, and keep in mind their lots, is called
Speaker 1: jamming granular materials. Yeah, it's not fish, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not widespread panic, it's nothing like that. It's not that
Speaker 1: kind of jamming. Uh. This this is actually looking at
Speaker 1: the way, it sounds like a medical condition, Like you
Speaker 1: end up in the emergency room because you've got a
Speaker 1: case of jamming granular materials. I'm sorry, miss, he's got
Speaker 1: jamming granular materials. Materials. Well. They The idea about this
Speaker 1: is is grain, very fine grains of of matter can
Speaker 1: behave like a fluid if they are loosely packed into
Speaker 1: a container. So imagine that you've got a jar that
Speaker 1: is maybe half filled with very fine dry sand, and
Speaker 1: you move the jar around and the sand flows almost
Speaker 1: like a fluid. It's similar more like a fluid than
Speaker 1: a solid. Right. But then let's say that you have
Speaker 1: twice as much sand packed in there, so it's actually
Speaker 1: really tightly uh packed inside that jar. Then it is rigid.
Speaker 1: Even if that jar were made out of a flexible
Speaker 1: material like plastic, you would have this rigid structure inside
Speaker 1: of it because you had jammed the the grand granules
Speaker 1: so tightly together. They're the same sort of idea has
Speaker 1: been proposed for types of these individual units for programmable
Speaker 1: or where you have some mechanism connected that can either
Speaker 1: compact or then relax and allowed this sort of granular
Speaker 1: material to either become rigid or soft, to change different shapes.
Speaker 1: So you would have the units and they would all
Speaker 1: be connected to each other in specific ways previously like
Speaker 1: they wouldn't disconnect and reconnect necessarily. They might all be
Speaker 1: connected permanently in one in one type of type of structure,
Speaker 1: but based upon these little links between them made out
Speaker 1: of this granular stuff there, they take on specific shapes
Speaker 1: because they're either rigid or they're soft, and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The other approach reason they go with this approach is
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter what the temperature is. They don't need
Speaker 1: to change the temperature to change that rigidity. It's just
Speaker 1: whether it's compact or whether it's loose. So I thought
Speaker 1: that was pretty neat the the image they had imagine
Speaker 1: kind of a pyramid where each it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a just the outline of pyramid, the structure of a
Speaker 1: pyramid without the actual phy egal sides. And each line
Speaker 1: is a little soft plastic container of sand. So when
Speaker 1: it's all rigid, it stands up like a pyramid, and
Speaker 1: when it's soft, it's just it's just a little pile.
Speaker 1: So uh, it's it's again just showing that there are
Speaker 1: multiple approaches to this idea, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of other universities and companies and research centers looking into this,
Speaker 1: including companies like Autodesk Research or Whitesides Group Research, m
Speaker 1: I T of course looking into at Harvard. We mentioned
Speaker 1: also there are tons of different approaches and no one
Speaker 1: yet has the you know, the way to do this,
Speaker 1: but definitely not. But by coming in it from so
Speaker 1: many different angles, it's awesome, right because it means that
Speaker 1: we have we're not putting all of our eggs in
Speaker 1: one basket, and it may mean that we ultimately find
Speaker 1: different ways to do the same sort of output, which
Speaker 1: gives us a lot more flexibility. You're gonna have like
Speaker 1: the Blu Ray HD DVD wars all over again, but
Speaker 1: about how you turn putty into a hammer. I'll go,
Speaker 1: I'll go to c e S one year and and
Speaker 1: the week before CS one will have pulled out of
Speaker 1: the show because it's clear that it's the loser. The
Speaker 1: first time I went to they will still be Putty
Speaker 1: Hammers HD DVD pulled out of c S. The first
Speaker 1: year I ever went, there was this one enormous blank
Speaker 1: spot on the c show floor where they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be. People were all taking naps. I guess, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think right, Well, I think we should look at
Speaker 1: what are the possible uses for something like claytronics or
Speaker 1: other similar forms of programmable matter. Yeah. Yeah, We've talked
Speaker 1: about this a little bit, but let's let's go deeper
Speaker 1: into it. Okay, Well, I wanted to gather a few
Speaker 1: different things here. One of them would be the tangible
Speaker 1: three D representations generated by data, and we sort of
Speaker 1: talked about these earlier. So one thing is you could
Speaker 1: simply use three D object to represent numbers and data.
Speaker 1: But the other one would be that you could sort
Speaker 1: of have what I would think of like a Google
Speaker 1: Docs of three D objects. So imagine you've got a
Speaker 1: saved document that is controlled by a digital file on
Speaker 1: your computer, but it's represented by a three D object,
Speaker 1: a real tangible three D object you can hold in
Speaker 1: your hand and you can make edits to it with
Speaker 1: your hands. Yeah, it's sort of like instead of having to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you get a three D
Speaker 1: printer and you print out a prototype, if you want
Speaker 1: to make changes to that prototype, you have to print
Speaker 1: another one from the ground up. You've got to go
Speaker 1: back in and redesign it digitally, redesign the digital thing.
Speaker 1: And and then well, I mean, and you'd still be
Speaker 1: redesigning the digital thing, but you'd be doing it physically
Speaker 1: with your You could just push is I wanted an
Speaker 1: indentt here? So instead of going and redesigning it on
Speaker 1: the computer, you just press it in and then those
Speaker 1: changes would be reflected because we're telling thing about at
Speaker 1: two way Street here. With a three D printer, there's
Speaker 1: a one way flow of information. It goes from the
Speaker 1: computer to the printer, which then creates the three dimensional object.
Speaker 1: With this implementation, it's more like an interactive display. You
Speaker 1: create the thing, but then you can actually manipulate the
Speaker 1: thing you have on the display. In this case, the
Speaker 1: display is a three dimensional object and that gets reflected
Speaker 1: in the file that you originally created. So that's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of uh. It cuts out another step in prototyping,
Speaker 1: which could mean that the prototyping process, which has already
Speaker 1: been sped up phenomenally because of three D printing, becomes
Speaker 1: even faster. Right, And so this would make a big difference,
Speaker 1: I think, to people who are like engineers, but also
Speaker 1: to people who are just designers, people making art and
Speaker 1: or or even designing products like smartphones and things like that.
Speaker 1: I mean industry. Yeah, Johnny Ives, get a hold of
Speaker 1: this thing, forget it? Game over. Another are interesting use
Speaker 1: for something like this would be a kind of utility
Speaker 1: putty that that phrase appeared in my brain, I want
Speaker 1: I wonder if I've read that somewhere before. I feel
Speaker 1: like that maybe a term that has been used by
Speaker 1: someone before. But anyway, just now it's yours, right, patent
Speaker 1: um No, Well, wherever this idea comes from, the utility
Speaker 1: putty would be if you imagine a kind of a
Speaker 1: small puddle of this beige or gray, it really doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what color it is. Let's call it pink. Uh,
Speaker 1: this small puddle of pink putty sitting on your kitchen counter.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm with you so far. You're making dinner now,
Speaker 1: and so you need a ladle and a bowl and
Speaker 1: cutting board and a knife. So you call them up
Speaker 1: on your kitchen utensils app on your computer, on your phone,
Speaker 1: and the puddle of putty as symbols itself into these
Speaker 1: shapes and becomes rigid. You use them like you would
Speaker 1: to prepare dinner. Then when you're done with them, they
Speaker 1: dissolve all back into the putty. Now, this could be
Speaker 1: a massive space saver in the home. Imagine if you
Speaker 1: like only had to call furniture into existence on demand
Speaker 1: when you needed it, and when you didn't need that
Speaker 1: piece of furniture, you could dissolve it. Yeah, or think
Speaker 1: about how useful something like this might be for portability purposes.
Speaker 1: So you're going on a camping trip, and if you
Speaker 1: ever been on a camping trip, you take the tent
Speaker 1: along with you. It is a large, unpleasant, unwieldy object.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to assemble or yeah, a whole bunches of
Speaker 1: different parts. Let's say instead you go out camping and
Speaker 1: instead you just bring along a bucket of utility coup.
Speaker 1: I got a bucket a tent right here. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: so you just pour the bucket out on the ground,
Speaker 1: queue up the sort of shelter design on your phone,
Speaker 1: and it assembles itself. You know, Joe, I have to
Speaker 1: say that tent design is beyond the pail. Oh oh,
Speaker 1: now we may be able to offer some pretty relevant
Speaker 1: criticisms of an idea like this in the next section,
Speaker 1: because you you immediately start thinking like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: where does the power for it to form that shape
Speaker 1: come from? In the woods? And stuff like that. But uh,
Speaker 1: just a couple other ideas. How about the three D facts.
Speaker 1: This is something that Claytronics people I think talked about.
Speaker 1: It goes like this, So you want to send a
Speaker 1: copy of a three dimensional object to somebody far away, Well,
Speaker 1: you could just submerge it into a tub of these
Speaker 1: particles like atoms or whatever they are. You've got a
Speaker 1: bucket of them, and you dip it underneath them. And
Speaker 1: then of course, once it's submerged, the particles can sense
Speaker 1: all of the contours of the object and then it
Speaker 1: can recreate that shape at the other side of the line.
Speaker 1: And here's the most sci fi of all, but it's
Speaker 1: something I have seen talked about. The idea of sort
Speaker 1: of the ultimate telepresence instead of just sending your voice,
Speaker 1: instead of just sending your face, you send a real
Speaker 1: physical replication of your body and movements across the telephone wire.
Speaker 1: I think a giant pink blobby. Jonathan Strickland is the
Speaker 1: stuff of my nightmares. Come here, I love you, Teach
Speaker 1: me to love. Yeah, even without that particular image in
Speaker 1: my head, that one struck me as being creepy. I'd
Speaker 1: like to apologize to everyone has not had that image
Speaker 1: in their heads. Jonathan hugging his loved ones from far
Speaker 1: away and a goopy, goopy mess and melting on them
Speaker 1: halfway through because the power goes out, Jonathan, And this
Speaker 1: is creepy to me. Alright, alright, well, okay, So other
Speaker 1: than the fact that we're all creeped up by this,
Speaker 1: what are some of the challenges that this sort of
Speaker 1: stuff faces. We Joe mentioned a second ago up up power.
Speaker 1: That's that's a huge one. Um. Obviously, this face is
Speaker 1: a lot of challenges, right, or otherwise we'd have it right. Well, man, interesting,
Speaker 1: this is very difficult to create, right Manajorizing power is
Speaker 1: one of those things that we haven't really cracked yet, right.
Speaker 1: We we can miniaturize circuitry to astonishing degrees, but manaturizing
Speaker 1: things like batteries is a lot more problematic. Um, assuming
Speaker 1: that you are using batteries and you're using something that
Speaker 1: is relying upon a chemical reaction to produce electrons for electricity,
Speaker 1: that eventually that's going to run out, You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to recharge. How do you do that? Like, what's the
Speaker 1: what's the mechanism? Right? What is the actual uh, method
Speaker 1: of delivery and method of execution? Because if these elements
Speaker 1: are going to be forming any shapes that they're going
Speaker 1: to move about and take on specific forms, they obviously
Speaker 1: need to have some form of power to do that.
Speaker 1: They can't just you know, do that without any outside influence.
Speaker 1: There has to be something acting on them. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's I go with electricity being the most likely. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the only one. We'll talk about the possible
Speaker 1: possibility of going a different route in the second, but
Speaker 1: it's still something that we have to consider like how
Speaker 1: do we get that to how do we crack that code? Okay?
Speaker 1: But also how do you get them to do what
Speaker 1: you're trying to get them to do? You need these
Speaker 1: particles all moving around each other, and any time that
Speaker 1: you have motion in a robot, moving parts are a
Speaker 1: complication because they can break and fail and do things
Speaker 1: that you didn't expect them to do, like totally not
Speaker 1: work right. So ideally you'd want these particles to be
Speaker 1: able to um move around relative to each other without
Speaker 1: having external moving parts, right, right, And in fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of work has gone into researching different ways to
Speaker 1: do that. Even the killer bots, the Harvard killer botts,
Speaker 1: which look like you may remember I mentioned it before,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a quarter sized circuit um
Speaker 1: that's sitting on top of a bunch of a little
Speaker 1: spider legs. Well, those individual legs don't actually have any
Speaker 1: movement to them. They don't they don't pivot or move
Speaker 1: in any way like that action figure. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: there is a little vibrating motor that's part of the
Speaker 1: circuit board, and the way the motor vibrates determines which
Speaker 1: way the little thing skitters across the floor. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different approaches that are looking into,
Speaker 1: not necessarily just that implementation, but this very this very
Speaker 1: idea you're proposing, Joe, the idea of a unit that
Speaker 1: can move around relative to other units without itself having
Speaker 1: any moving parts. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen magnets proposed as
Speaker 1: another thing. By by flipping the polarity of a magnet
Speaker 1: back and forth, you could get things to move around
Speaker 1: each other. And there's some that are talking about electrostatic forces. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's another interesting element that we can talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that uh, sticking these things together a
Speaker 1: chance you've moved them into position, they need to form
Speaker 1: up and be solid, right, didn't the M I T
Speaker 1: M blocks which are definitely bigger than than you know,
Speaker 1: particle size. Sure, yeah, they're like like the size of
Speaker 1: blocks that that you would give a little kid, like
Speaker 1: the once had the letters, right, but they I think
Speaker 1: had a momentum based movement system, right, like they had magnets,
Speaker 1: and then they would move by having a little flywheel
Speaker 1: inside that Basically you know, did the move you do
Speaker 1: when you're on the swing set as a kid and
Speaker 1: you kick your legs forward. It's a build up, build
Speaker 1: up momentum right right. It's it's like the dancing toaster
Speaker 1: in Ghostbusters too. Yeah, yeah, it actually does. It does
Speaker 1: move like that like it's you hear it worrying and
Speaker 1: then there's a sudden jolt and it and it leaps,
Speaker 1: because what's happening is the fly will start spinning at
Speaker 1: an incredible speed, higher and higher. Yes, it's just like
Speaker 1: your love lifts me. Uh, Ghostbusters too is a terrible movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we're referencing when it really is
Speaker 1: you don't love Prince Vigo. When it breaks as in
Speaker 1: B R A K E. And then that momentum gets
Speaker 1: shifted into motion for the block, which allows it to
Speaker 1: leap over or onto other sub objects. So super smart.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that would be doable at a
Speaker 1: very very small scale. Could you create cranes of sand
Speaker 1: that use momentum to move around? I don't think they've
Speaker 1: got those little electronic gyroscopes, and I still don't really
Speaker 1: understand how they work. But sure, I'm sure that if
Speaker 1: you cause and Adams electrons to spin around and then
Speaker 1: you make it stop real quick, then it can totally
Speaker 1: bounce across the room. I think, believe Lauren, I think
Speaker 1: you'd probably be looking at other forces rather than momentum
Speaker 1: on something that's small of a scale. Why are you
Speaker 1: killing my dreams? Chat? You know you don't love Prince Vigo.
Speaker 1: I don't care what you think you guys, chasm, get
Speaker 1: off my podcast room. Okay, okay. What are some of
Speaker 1: the other challenges with programmable matter, like the kind we've
Speaker 1: been talking Well, like we were saying, making them stick together? Right,
Speaker 1: that's hard, Like, how do you how do you do that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What once they're in the right position relative to one another,
Speaker 1: how do you get them to lock up and be solid? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, magnets are nice, but obviously, like all of
Speaker 1: these other issues, it gets harder and harder than more.
Speaker 1: You miniat your eyes right. Uh. There's also the idea
Speaker 1: of using things like sockets or clamps, so this would
Speaker 1: be a physical thing on each individual unit that would
Speaker 1: allow it to connect to its neighbors. Uh. The clectronics
Speaker 1: projects exploring electrostatic latches, so you could have an external
Speaker 1: force applied to this stuff to make it stick to
Speaker 1: whatever shape it's supposed to be in. But that also
Speaker 1: gets complicated, particularly as you add more and more individual
Speaker 1: elements to the overall object. Um, you'd also need some
Speaker 1: form of processor inside each unit, at least on some level.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't necessarily seems like the easiest part almost almost
Speaker 1: It all depends on how complicated the processor is and
Speaker 1: exactly how small we're talking, Yeah, because we have been
Speaker 1: able to vastly miniature eyes computing. Definitely, the individual components
Speaker 1: have gotten incredibly tiny, Like a transistor on a microprocessor
Speaker 1: might be as small as like fourteen nanometers in width,
Speaker 1: which is that's it's all impossible for me to even imagine.
Speaker 1: It's so tiny. We're getting down to a very small
Speaker 1: scale with that. And depending upon how complex the processor
Speaker 1: needs to be for each individual unit, you can get
Speaker 1: away with a pretty simple one. I mean, if all
Speaker 1: it needs to know is where it's relative position needs
Speaker 1: to be, uh compared to every other unit inside that
Speaker 1: that group of units, whatever it is catams or vauxhols
Speaker 1: or whatever, then it may not need to be that complex, right,
Speaker 1: you might not need that much processing. But if you're
Speaker 1: talking about adding other elements to it, like sensors or actuators,
Speaker 1: well then it starts to get a little more complicated.
Speaker 1: The processor might need to be a little larger, there
Speaker 1: might need to be some other elements there, and that's
Speaker 1: where you start running into some some other challenges. Another
Speaker 1: thing I want to point out is that the Claytronics
Speaker 1: project specifically calls out Moore's law as being an enabler
Speaker 1: for this kind of approach the idea right there, basing
Speaker 1: this on the assumption that Moore's law will continue to
Speaker 1: hold true, right, that we will be able to continue
Speaker 1: make being more powerful computational units things like you know,
Speaker 1: processors at smaller and smaller scales. But if we ever
Speaker 1: do hit that kind of that wall where we suddenly
Speaker 1: plateau because we cannot physically make things smaller and still
Speaker 1: make them work, then that could become an issue. Or
Speaker 1: it may not mean that it's impossible to make programmable matter.
Speaker 1: It may just limit how small the individual units can
Speaker 1: be before we can't make them effective. So we might
Speaker 1: still have programmable matter, but maybe we're talking about larger grains,
Speaker 1: so we have uh slightly you know, lower resolution for
Speaker 1: your macro sized object once they're all connected together. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, it could turn out like people have been
Speaker 1: predicting the ends of into Moore's law shortly after Gordon
Speaker 1: Moore made the observation. Uh So, it may very well
Speaker 1: be that it's premature to even say that such a
Speaker 1: thing is gonna plateau, because we might find other alternative
Speaker 1: means to keep moving that processing power forward. Just in
Speaker 1: a totally different way than what we have been doing.
Speaker 1: So I don't mean to say that that you know,
Speaker 1: this is untenable. It may be that we have find
Speaker 1: we find another way of doing it um, And there
Speaker 1: are plenty of engineers who are way smarter than I
Speaker 1: am who are working on that. So it's just something
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up another side of the kind
Speaker 1: of Morris law argument, which is in essence a physical
Speaker 1: property problem. Um, we have the the physical properties of
Speaker 1: particle interaction because they do different things at a macro scale,
Speaker 1: the scale that you and I and all of us
Speaker 1: run around on and the scale at which say, atoms
Speaker 1: and nanoparticles interact with each other. Right, you're talking about
Speaker 1: quantum effects. Now we're talking about these you'll never get
Speaker 1: your hands quantum entangles with, like a baseball or something.
Speaker 1: I had an issue of quantum entanglement in college that
Speaker 1: nearly got me suspended. But at any rate, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was whatever that meant. It sounded creepy. Look, look, I
Speaker 1: had a love of chili cheese fries. There was an incident.
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to talk about it more than that. Gosh,
Speaker 1: you guys just assume the worst. No, I'm sorry, you're
Speaker 1: a sweet man. Thank you? At any rate? Uh no,
Speaker 1: I was specifically trying to lure you down a dark
Speaker 1: and depressing road. Um at any rate, No good. What
Speaker 1: what Lauren was saying is absolutely correct. We get into
Speaker 1: these quantum effects which can cause some real issues. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: we're talking super small here, right below the micro scale
Speaker 1: down to the nano scale. But if you are actually
Speaker 1: going through the ideal implementation of this idea of programmable
Speaker 1: matter where you're able to make nano particles be part
Speaker 1: of this, you have to take quantum effects into account
Speaker 1: because you've got all sorts of weird things that can
Speaker 1: happen in that scale. Now, my guests would be as
Speaker 1: crazy as it sounds to us to have, you know, say,
Speaker 1: programmable matter particles that are the size of grains of
Speaker 1: sand or something. This wouldn't really be much of an
Speaker 1: issue even on that scale, right, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: we'd have to be talking about even smaller than that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean you have to get like, before we got
Speaker 1: down to say, transistors at the hundred nanometer scale, we
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry so much about something called electron tunneling,
Speaker 1: which is where an electron. Can you know there's a
Speaker 1: you know, you can't ever be certain exactly where an
Speaker 1: electron is. There's kind of a yeah, there's like a zone,
Speaker 1: and the electron could in theory exist at any point
Speaker 1: within that zone. I'm oversimplified. Their their probability distribution exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you make an electron gate and
Speaker 1: the with the thickness of the gate is less than
Speaker 1: what that probability region you know, covers, the probability region
Speaker 1: actually overlaps it. So the electron should be on one
Speaker 1: side of the gate. But this probability probability distribution states
Speaker 1: that there's a chance, maybe a small one, but there's
Speaker 1: a chance that could be on the other side of
Speaker 1: that gate. Well, if there's a chance, that means sometimes
Speaker 1: the electron is yeah, which means that the electron is
Speaker 1: has passed through. It's as if the electron has tunneled
Speaker 1: through that gate, even though it has not physically done.
Speaker 1: So the gate never opened. The electron is able to
Speaker 1: pass over because it's that it probabilistically there was a
Speaker 1: chance for it. Yeah. It also it also means it
Speaker 1: makes your computer less reliable. It means you could get
Speaker 1: computer errors so now we're probably I'm very skeptical that
Speaker 1: we're ever going to get to a point where we
Speaker 1: can deal with matter on a scale that's small to
Speaker 1: make it programmable. But that's only based upon my very
Speaker 1: limited understanding of nanotechnology and physics. It maybe that one
Speaker 1: day in the future we can control matter at that degree,
Speaker 1: but it would really surprise me. Okay, but hey, speaking
Speaker 1: of controlling matter um and and physical and quantum properties
Speaker 1: of things, if we're going to reach that point anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a possibility of using chemical or physical interactions to
Speaker 1: create programmable material um It's it's the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that a lot of researchers who are thinking about for
Speaker 1: d printing are being inspired by, like a protein folding
Speaker 1: and DNA stuff and biological interactions on that intracellular level
Speaker 1: um and and in parallel crystallization patterns as well. Those
Speaker 1: kind of processes happen all around us all the time,
Speaker 1: and if we could harness them, it could be just
Speaker 1: as effective as building we little robots. Right. In fact,
Speaker 1: Jean Marie Lenn proposed even before we got to the
Speaker 1: term programmable matter, I mean this predates that genre. Lenn
Speaker 1: proposed developing synthetic molecules that could follow the rules of
Speaker 1: self organization, which would be determined by chemists by the
Speaker 1: actual construction of those molecules. Once you know the structure
Speaker 1: of the molecules and how they interact with each other,
Speaker 1: you know what form the macro object will eventually take
Speaker 1: form to form these more complex structures. And Lenn called
Speaker 1: it informed matter. Uh so there's a lot of theoretical
Speaker 1: work in nanotechnology that follows that particular philosophy, just like
Speaker 1: what Lauren was saying. Yeah, so yeah, it's it's and
Speaker 1: it is much more similar to four D printing. Uh
Speaker 1: if you've seen that video off forward, thinking that that
Speaker 1: would be closer to what we're talking about here. Um okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to round out this episode with some
Speaker 1: nay saying, all right, I've been I've been holding it
Speaker 1: in all episode. Uh okay, do we need to worry
Speaker 1: if if we're starting to make this this programmable putty stuff,
Speaker 1: do we need to worry about the gray goo apocalypse? Uh? No, No,
Speaker 1: because because we're not self replicating, right. No, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean we don't need to worry about it for a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. Uh. Number one, I am very very
Speaker 1: skeptical of the gray goo apocalypse, even if you're actually
Speaker 1: talking about molecular simblers, which I am skeptical of to
Speaker 1: begin with. But also this is not the same thing
Speaker 1: as a molecular assembler. A molecular assembler is something that
Speaker 1: at the you know, molecular level, would be building new particles,
Speaker 1: making new molecules, and eventually assembling matter out of them.
Speaker 1: And the terrible idea is that what if they start
Speaker 1: making copies of themselves and turn the whole world into
Speaker 1: molecular assemblers. You know, they just eat through everything like
Speaker 1: using it as just using that as the raw material
Speaker 1: to build more. Yeah. The difference between programmable materials and
Speaker 1: replicators is that replicators are kind of like carpenters, right
Speaker 1: car these are these are the things that make other objects.
Speaker 1: They themselves don't form that object, whereas programmable matter is
Speaker 1: just stuff that can conform to whatever shape or or
Speaker 1: you know, substance you need to perform a specific task,
Speaker 1: but itself is that thing. It's not making a chair,
Speaker 1: It itself becomes a chair. Okay, so it's not melting
Speaker 1: down your old chair to to make sare I can't
Speaker 1: really imagine it would be all that dangerous. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you ate a bunch of it, keep it
Speaker 1: up Toddler's hands. Okay, do we need to worry about
Speaker 1: people creating an army of T one thousand, so you
Speaker 1: know that one's more realistic. You know. That's response to
Speaker 1: that question. I don't know, because I I mean, all
Speaker 1: of this, if it's realizable, is pretty far away. But
Speaker 1: what seems much more likely to me is the ability
Speaker 1: to UH to sort of as symbol and then dissolve
Speaker 1: rigid shapes. It will not so much the ability to
Speaker 1: create complex, moving and thinking object. However, we did talk
Speaker 1: about the possibility of using it as a form of
Speaker 1: visualization for telepresence, so and as I noted at that time,
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the more out there kind
Speaker 1: of sci fi. So it may be there. It may
Speaker 1: be that we could in that same sci fi future
Speaker 1: where we could make this as a telepresence, you could
Speaker 1: make something akin to the T one thousand, although maybe
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have its own intelligence. It would be operating
Speaker 1: under some other UH commands that were remotely. It would
Speaker 1: be a remote controlled T one as opposed to a
Speaker 1: self aware, self actualized AI would have to advance a
Speaker 1: great deal as well, and in this time, if we
Speaker 1: were to create an actual t one be as smart
Speaker 1: as Robert Patrick and as suave, suave, suave guy. But
Speaker 1: let us, let's let's all make a pact that we're
Speaker 1: just not gonna pair that kind of AI power with
Speaker 1: that kind of programmable material. I can, I can almost
Speaker 1: guarantee I won't excellent. Okay, what what about one last one?
Speaker 1: What about someone hacking your claytronics and I don't know,
Speaker 1: like making them attack you or like stick solely in
Speaker 1: the shape of Dolf Longren space or something. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I think of it in the same
Speaker 1: way that uh, like a hacker could hack into your
Speaker 1: system and cause your display to show whatever the hacker wanted.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're thinking of claytronics or programmable matter
Speaker 1: as a type of display technology, there's no reason that
Speaker 1: the same thing couldn't hold true. I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: what it could I mean, like, so again, we're assuming
Speaker 1: it's not going to be able to create a robot
Speaker 1: that walks over to you and kills you. It might
Speaker 1: be able to form itself into the shape of a
Speaker 1: knife or something. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like if if you if you've got a chair, a
Speaker 1: Clatronics chair, and oh like it dissolves the chair while
Speaker 1: you're sitting on it. I see what I imagine, Pokey,
Speaker 1: what I imagine is trolling people. So like when a
Speaker 1: Star Wars nerd like myself decides that they want to
Speaker 1: make their own lightsaber hilt using this stuff instead it
Speaker 1: forms the hand giving the vulcan salute. If that would
Speaker 1: be the kind of like, no, it's not even the
Speaker 1: rate starting man, it was stir Wars, that stern. That
Speaker 1: would be exactly how I would sound. I think we
Speaker 1: need to go back and start this podcast over with
Speaker 1: you doing that voice. Yeah. In fact, if if we
Speaker 1: can time travel and do the entire run of it,
Speaker 1: and that's that's when our podcast numbers plum. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, actually I can kind of see that that
Speaker 1: might be a concern you. You might want to I
Speaker 1: don't know, that might be a good case for if
Speaker 1: you were to ever have a sort of utility putty,
Speaker 1: to have it be a stand alone system that's not
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet. Yeah, I mean I can't. It's
Speaker 1: hard for me to imagine that simply because Right now,
Speaker 1: the trend is to connect more and more of our
Speaker 1: stuff to the Internet, and it's to have fewer and
Speaker 1: fewer stand alone systems that are isolated from the Internet.
Speaker 1: But it could be that because of things like Internet security,
Speaker 1: that we start to see a trend reversing. That it
Speaker 1: could happen. We could start to see things like self
Speaker 1: contain networks that don't they either have limited or no
Speaker 1: connectivity to the Internet. Overall, that could become a trend
Speaker 1: and at least the for you know, the near future.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's sustainable forever. But um, I
Speaker 1: did have one more naysayer question. But I think that
Speaker 1: we've I think that we've mostly covered this one. But
Speaker 1: but I'm going to go ahead and say it out loud.
Speaker 1: Um okay. Based on the way that three D printing
Speaker 1: technology is moving these days, um becoming cheaper and and
Speaker 1: more advanced and using multiple materials and and electronics that
Speaker 1: you can print right into your your three D printed stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, just at what point, like like, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine a universe in which programmable materials become cheap and
Speaker 1: plentiful enough to replace the kind of advances that we're
Speaker 1: seeing in three D printing these days. That's a that's
Speaker 1: that's a very fair criticism. I think the one big
Speaker 1: benefit obviously we've talked about is that in the ideal implementation,
Speaker 1: programmable material can take on any shape, so it replaces
Speaker 1: practically anything that that material is able, like anything that
Speaker 1: any shape that material can make. It replaces whatever that
Speaker 1: would have been right. So in your kitchen example, it
Speaker 1: could replace all your kitchen accessories, which at least anything
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily like a blender or a toaster or
Speaker 1: something like Oh sure, sure, you know it's because you
Speaker 1: don't need a whisk twenty four hours a day. If
Speaker 1: you do, you're doing something that I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 1: I want to know about. It goes back to my
Speaker 1: college days and the quantum entanglement. But at any rate.
Speaker 1: But but no, no, I mean, it could be a
Speaker 1: potato peeler, or it could be right, right or right.
Speaker 1: That's that's the benefit because obviously, with traditional three D printing,
Speaker 1: you are printing a set object and that's what that
Speaker 1: that's what's going to be until you throw it away
Speaker 1: or it breaks right, it's it's gonna be that thing.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna suddenly morph into a different shape. However,
Speaker 1: if this programmable matter is prohibitively expensive, so that the
Speaker 1: buy in cost is so high that it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to ever get it, even though it can theoretically
Speaker 1: be you know, quote unquote whatever you need it to be,
Speaker 1: it would make much more sense to go the three
Speaker 1: D printed route, which is going to be less expensive.
Speaker 1: So economics plays a role. I mean, that's one of
Speaker 1: those things where we talk about the possibilities, and this
Speaker 1: plays across all areas of science and technology. We talk
Speaker 1: about the things that are possible versus the things that
Speaker 1: are probable. We might prove in the lab that a
Speaker 1: certain approach is possible, but if it's not economically feasible,
Speaker 1: it's not plausible, right right, And and I certainly don't
Speaker 1: want to say that that everyone should stop researching this
Speaker 1: kind of thing immediately because it's useless, because A I
Speaker 1: would never say that about science, because all science is
Speaker 1: useful in one way or another. Um, even if it's
Speaker 1: just the learning process that we go through to reach
Speaker 1: a conclusion that something is is less than feasible. Um. However, Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean I just wanted to to throw a little
Speaker 1: bit of reality and in this I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be so awesome if we actually created this,
Speaker 1: Like we didn't even get into the industrial uses for
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, Like if if you could create
Speaker 1: a bridge that you could reprogram on the fly in
Speaker 1: case of natural disaster or something like that. Or I mean,
Speaker 1: think about if you had I don't know, airplane wings
Speaker 1: that could adjust themselves in shape to be maximum efficiency
Speaker 1: at different stages of flight. Um. Yeah, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're all kinds of different things that you could do
Speaker 1: that we can just sit here and imagine. Part of
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing about something like this Claytronics programmable
Speaker 1: matter future is that we can't really predict all the
Speaker 1: ways that this kind of technology would change our lives.
Speaker 1: It seems like it could be one of those things
Speaker 1: that's just a total flop, you know, like, oh, we
Speaker 1: thought this would be really cool, but you know, who cares,
Speaker 1: or it could be completely revolutionary and I really can't
Speaker 1: tell which. Right, We're again, we're in the infancy, so
Speaker 1: there's no way of telling yet, right, But we're learning
Speaker 1: tons about artificial intelligence, swarm intelligence, modularity, robotics, computer science.
Speaker 1: There's so much that we're learning, chemical and physical property exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of this information is useful. Yeah, so the quantum
Speaker 1: entanglement with chili cheese fries, we're learning so much whisks,
Speaker 1: and I don't like to talk about it. Actually I'm
Speaker 1: mandated not to um. But at any rate, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's really cool that we want Joe, look you that
Speaker 1: you're whisking your chili cheese fries until they're properly emulsified.
Speaker 1: It's close enough, alright. So at any rate, Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're learning so much that even if ultimately we
Speaker 1: never see an implementation that approaches the ideal one, uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna benefit in other ways that we can't even
Speaker 1: anticipate right now. And that's that's just the way science is.
Speaker 1: And in fact, that's the why that's why I'm always
Speaker 1: very passionate about advocating for science, because you know, to
Speaker 1: have to advocate science to say that there's some in
Speaker 1: the goal and that that in goal is going to
Speaker 1: be valuable so that you can justify the funding of
Speaker 1: it is one of the banes of science. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a reality in our world. But it's
Speaker 1: good to keep in mind. But but it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: a limiting factor doing awesome research. Yeah, people want promises.
Speaker 1: I mean they want short term gains, things they can see. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's if you're if you're ultimately having to
Speaker 1: justify giving money to someone that I can understand. You know,
Speaker 1: I understand both sides, right, I understand the psychology that
Speaker 1: goes into both sides. Uh. That's why I'm really hoping
Speaker 1: we can get to that Star Trek economy we talked
Speaker 1: about a few episodes ago, so that we no longer
Speaker 1: have to worry about money and we can just end up, uh,
Speaker 1: pursuing scientific endeavors without any limitations. Yeah, jumpsuits and with
Speaker 1: little communicators. Never forget the jumpsuit. You know, I can't.
Speaker 1: I've tried, all right. So that wraps up this discussion
Speaker 1: about claytronics and programmable matter. If you guys have any
Speaker 1: questions or suggestions for future topics, let us know. Send
Speaker 1: us an email the addresses f W Thinking at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Twitter,
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