Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future. It says, I'm
Speaker 1: just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocon, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: you know, on this podcast once or twice we've talked
Speaker 1: about three D printing, right, yes, additive manufacturing. Well, Joe,
Speaker 1: I I'm not surprised you don't remember. So much time
Speaker 1: has passed now. Three D printing, of course, is like
Speaker 1: you said, Lauren, it's additive manufacturing. It's when you're using
Speaker 1: a device to create some sort of object, three dimensional object,
Speaker 1: layer by layer, and it's uh, it's it's somewhat of
Speaker 1: a painstaking process, but it's less wasteful than subtractive manufacturing,
Speaker 1: which is where you would take a block of something
Speaker 1: and then carve away all the stuff you don't want, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it gives you the ability to design virtually with precision. Right,
Speaker 1: you can prototype stuff, you can print it out, you
Speaker 1: can test it see if it has has any merit.
Speaker 1: If not, you can go back to the drawing board
Speaker 1: a lot more cheaply than than traditional prototyping would have worked,
Speaker 1: and much faster too. Because you don't have to sit
Speaker 1: there and try and carve it away and then send
Speaker 1: a mold or or some sort of other model off
Speaker 1: to be manufactured in a more uh sturdy format. You
Speaker 1: can actually test things out very rapidly, and it really
Speaker 1: helps you when you're developing something brand new. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this idea that popped up
Speaker 1: this year. I think it popped up this spring. Um.
Speaker 1: It's called fort printing. And you know, Joe, you're not
Speaker 1: the only one I want to talk about this. In fact,
Speaker 1: almost instantly after we uploaded our three D printer video,
Speaker 1: we had someone commenting, what about four D printing? What
Speaker 1: is for D printing? Well, I assume it must be
Speaker 1: one better. Yes, it's better than three by a whole one.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's at least better than three. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so for D printing maybe better than three D printing.
Speaker 1: But what it really breaks down to it comes from
Speaker 1: this guy named Skylar Tibbots, which is an awesome name.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh. And most people became familiar with this idea
Speaker 1: through a Ted talk he had that sort of went
Speaker 1: viral in the popular science media sphere. UM And in
Speaker 1: this Ted talk he introduces this idea of for D printing,
Speaker 1: and essentially what it is is combining two major concepts.
Speaker 1: It's three D printing with programmable materials. So when you
Speaker 1: think about things that are programmable, one would be like
Speaker 1: computer software, and that means that it has a function
Speaker 1: that unfolds across time. So you you give some sort
Speaker 1: of input and the software takes that input, performs some
Speaker 1: form of operation upon that input, and gives you output
Speaker 1: as a result. Right, it's a it's a sequence of
Speaker 1: events in linear time. UM. And so what if you
Speaker 1: could create materials, just three D materials like a block
Speaker 1: or a sheet that also we're programmable, meaning they had
Speaker 1: they had functionality, not not not not reality, No, it's
Speaker 1: for real. What on the nano scale. That's what happens
Speaker 1: all the time within your own body. Now you're blowing
Speaker 1: my mind. Yeah, Well we'll get into those metaphors in
Speaker 1: a bit. But basically, what we're talking about is a
Speaker 1: piece of plastica UM that can change its own shape
Speaker 1: or physical properties in response to a stimulus over time. Right,
Speaker 1: So you put something like this in your mind, a
Speaker 1: string of black plastic. It's just a tube. It doesn't
Speaker 1: do anything as far as you know. But submerge it
Speaker 1: in water and it curls up to spell a phrase
Speaker 1: in cursive like, uh, Jonathan, the programmable material skeptic is
Speaker 1: stupid that I would not at all be shocked to
Speaker 1: find that. And then you can just remove it, Okay.
Speaker 1: So you could remove it from the water and it
Speaker 1: might revert to its original state, or you could apply
Speaker 1: a different kind of energy, say instead of water, you
Speaker 1: could apply solar energy to it, or heat, or you
Speaker 1: could applying cone. Yeah, exactly. Um. So you shake it
Speaker 1: up and it curls into a pre arrange shape. And
Speaker 1: the way this works is just basic physical design. It's
Speaker 1: got um it's got inherent tendencies towards certain shapes, and
Speaker 1: when it encounters this energy. It doesn't have an electric motor,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have any moving parts or chemicals or anything
Speaker 1: like that. The molecules just realign to this other shape.
Speaker 1: They have an affinity for right. And in the case
Speaker 1: of that first example, with submerging something in water, what
Speaker 1: you're really doing is is printing a single object with
Speaker 1: different materials from a three D printer UM. And those
Speaker 1: different materials have different water absorption properties, and so when
Speaker 1: when you get them wet, they do different stuffs right, right,
Speaker 1: So that makes it bend in a different way. So
Speaker 1: on the macro scale we see it end up taking
Speaker 1: a particular shape. On the micro or nanoscale, lots of
Speaker 1: complicated things are happening so that those structures form the
Speaker 1: shape you're looking at right. Um. And so what Lauren
Speaker 1: just introduced is where three D printing hits this. So
Speaker 1: I was talking about programmable materials, but what for D
Speaker 1: printing says is, hey, you can print programmable materials pretty
Speaker 1: easily with a three D printer UM. And this could
Speaker 1: be useful in a lot of ways that we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in a bit, uh. But but essentially the idea
Speaker 1: is you're using a three D printer to put together
Speaker 1: a thing that changes over time given a certain amount
Speaker 1: of energy applied to it and particular form. It's kind
Speaker 1: of if you want to think of it in the
Speaker 1: terms of programming as far as software goes, You know,
Speaker 1: anyone who's programmed knows the if then statement, right, if
Speaker 1: X then Y, that kind of idea. So in this case,
Speaker 1: it would be if certain type of energy is applied
Speaker 1: to this material, then take this particular shape. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the if. Then a programmable materials, you've you've printed
Speaker 1: something that, by its very nature, when something specific is
Speaker 1: applied to it, it will change shape in a predetermined way.
Speaker 1: It's not like this is going to change shape in
Speaker 1: in ways that we didn't intend. You're you're designing it
Speaker 1: from the get go so that it will acquire a
Speaker 1: specific shape. Yeah, so you can imagine more useful applications
Speaker 1: for programmable materials like this than just spelling out insults
Speaker 1: in cursive. You could think about furniture, say yeah, so
Speaker 1: so let's say let's say I go to my favorite
Speaker 1: furniture store. I key uh, because of course there's the
Speaker 1: wonderful Jonathan Coulton song about it. Anyway, I decided to
Speaker 1: go and I buy something, and I bring it back
Speaker 1: home and I open it up and then I look
Speaker 1: at the quote unquote simple instructions, and I realized that
Speaker 1: the rest of my weekend is gone. As I try
Speaker 1: and put this together, and invariably something goes on the
Speaker 1: wrong way or backwards or whatever. But let's say that
Speaker 1: we have reached a point where we have this self
Speaker 1: assembling style of material, this programmable material that not only
Speaker 1: will take its specific shape once you've applied the right
Speaker 1: kind of energy, but we'll even interlock with other parts
Speaker 1: that are that are made out of that same sort
Speaker 1: of material. They've got this great part in that Ted
Speaker 1: talk you were you were referring to, where they show
Speaker 1: this material that's broken up into little bitty pieces inside
Speaker 1: a beaker, and when you shake the beaker, you're you
Speaker 1: are introducing random energy into the system. It starts to
Speaker 1: come back together and form a a full unit as
Speaker 1: opposed to a bunch of little pieces. And this is
Speaker 1: done basically with with with with magnets and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I mean on at the current moment. These are more
Speaker 1: ideological um experiments than really deep chemical experiment and it's
Speaker 1: not and it's not something that you know, the the
Speaker 1: average person is going to have at their disposal any
Speaker 1: time and say like the next year or two years
Speaker 1: or whatever. But the principle there is that maybe in
Speaker 1: the future, instead of buying a box that you come
Speaker 1: home and you open it up, it's got all these
Speaker 1: different pieces and then you spend the next if you're
Speaker 1: me seventy two hours trying to put it all together.
Speaker 1: You get something that when you add heat or you
Speaker 1: shake it up, it ends up actually taking the shape
Speaker 1: of whatever it is you specifically wanted, and it saves
Speaker 1: you a lot of time and energy and effort, and
Speaker 1: it really all the way down the line, it means
Speaker 1: that things get simpler in design. Yeah, you could just
Speaker 1: merely dunk a plastic sheet into water, or say, expose
Speaker 1: it to sunlight or electricity from wall socket and it
Speaker 1: reconfigures itself into a coffee table. Right. And I've seen
Speaker 1: some great video that was also either part of the
Speaker 1: Ted talk or just related stuff that's in the the
Speaker 1: lab that Scalar Tipots works out of, where, for example,
Speaker 1: they showed a a sheet of plastic. It wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a rectangular sheet. You could actually tell that
Speaker 1: it was meant to fold up into a cube and
Speaker 1: then submerged in water and then it very slowly because
Speaker 1: I think the video is sped up by fifty times
Speaker 1: normal speed, but very slowly. No, but it does, it
Speaker 1: does configure itself into the shape of a cube, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool to see. Now if you're watching that
Speaker 1: and you're thinking this is sped up at fifty times
Speaker 1: normal speed, and all this sheet is doing is turning
Speaker 1: into a cube. It's hard to grasp how this could
Speaker 1: have applications, but it's really just a proof of concept
Speaker 1: at that stage. Right. This lab that we're talking about
Speaker 1: the tipots friends, UM, it's called the self assembly lab.
Speaker 1: It's at M I, T and UM. They're they're defining
Speaker 1: self assembly as a process by which disordered parts build
Speaker 1: an ordered ructure through local interaction. UM. So, so what
Speaker 1: they're really focusing on is non electronics stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that the interesting future applications are all involving
Speaker 1: some form of computerization. And they have played around a
Speaker 1: little bit with with robots, which I'll talk about in
Speaker 1: another moment. But but but but yeah, there, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to eliminate the need to simulate and then build,
Speaker 1: or to build and then adjust, um in the long run,
Speaker 1: by by running these thought experiments and seeing, you know, like, well,
Speaker 1: what what can we how can we use physics and
Speaker 1: chemistry to get stuff to do what we want it
Speaker 1: to for us rather than us having to go in
Speaker 1: and physically change things. Yeah, it's important to remember that
Speaker 1: while the examples of this we've seen are pretty basic.
Speaker 1: This is extremely primitive technology and well sort of respectively,
Speaker 1: in this field, it's brand new. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: really just collaborations at this point between architects and artists.
Speaker 1: And there's a company called UH status is I think,
Speaker 1: and an Autodesk, and in a bunch of other industry
Speaker 1: three D printing and UH and other tech leaders are
Speaker 1: are getting in on this and going like this is cool,
Speaker 1: what can we do? Yeah? And then you know, there
Speaker 1: are some great potential benefits to this, for example, cutting
Speaker 1: way down on the amount of resources and energy and
Speaker 1: money that takes to go into manufacturing, building out infrastructures,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And that's in fact, a large
Speaker 1: part of Skylar's talk is to to on on the
Speaker 1: Ted Talks. I call him Skylar, sometimes I just call
Speaker 1: him sky Yeah, that's fair. So anyway, there's he really
Speaker 1: points out that that they're they're taking a long term
Speaker 1: view of this potential approach and saying this is something
Speaker 1: that could be you know, we love to use the
Speaker 1: word disruptive, like this could be disruptive and these these
Speaker 1: established chains of things like manufacturing where UH it simplifies
Speaker 1: stuff and saves lots and lots of money in the
Speaker 1: long run, also saves energy, which, of course that's really important,
Speaker 1: you know, as we're still trying to develop a way
Speaker 1: of producing energy that meets the world's needs without making
Speaker 1: it an uninhabitable place. Then saving it it matters a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because infrastructure right now, the way that we do it
Speaker 1: is is so rigid. It's rigid by design because it
Speaker 1: needs to be, because we we need it to last
Speaker 1: a long time and and be sturdy and whether the
Speaker 1: elements and all of that kind of stuff. And so
Speaker 1: do we want to start talking about applications about like
Speaker 1: like like like what if instead of having UM giant
Speaker 1: metal and concrete sewer pipes or water pipes, UM, we
Speaker 1: could have forty printed water pipes that could actually adjust
Speaker 1: to demand. Yeah, this is a concept that Tibots himself
Speaker 1: talks about UM in one of his talks. I think
Speaker 1: it's the Ted talker, Okay, yeah, but he talks about
Speaker 1: UH piping UH. And that's a perfect example because a
Speaker 1: lot of the UH materials they've already come up with
Speaker 1: respond to water. And so the idea he has is
Speaker 1: a pipe that undulates, so it could expand when there's
Speaker 1: more demand for water, contract when there's less demand for water,
Speaker 1: or it could even undulate to push the water along
Speaker 1: without the need for turbines to to move the water through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would reduce the requirement for things like pumping stations
Speaker 1: to to be able to get water exactly where it
Speaker 1: needs to go. I think a lot of people when
Speaker 1: they're turning their faucets on don't realize the incredible amount
Speaker 1: of engineering it took to make that a possibility. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but if the pipe itself could just work like say
Speaker 1: you're esophagus does when you swallow something. You know how
Speaker 1: you can swallow even when you're upside down. It's because
Speaker 1: of that muscle motion and softly swallow when I'm upside down.
Speaker 1: That's why you see me staying on my head whenever
Speaker 1: I met lunch, I know, hanging from the ceiling, drinking
Speaker 1: blood in your apartment in the darkness. We call you
Speaker 1: we gotta let's keep it on the download days. But
Speaker 1: your esophagus, when you're drinking blood like that, your esophagus goes.
Speaker 1: I think it's called peristalsis Is that correct? The name?
Speaker 1: I just call it miller time anyway, It's a muscle
Speaker 1: contraction that pushes what's in your mouth down your throat
Speaker 1: and towards your stomach um. And yeah, and if pipes
Speaker 1: work that way, that could be really useful. Another application
Speaker 1: that that I think is interesting is in space exploration. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: In fact, that was one of the other points, is
Speaker 1: that this idea, that this could allow you to put
Speaker 1: together things, uh in environments that are traditionally difficult or
Speaker 1: dangerous or deadly to human beings. So, whether it's in
Speaker 1: the Antarctic or in the outer reaches of space, if
Speaker 1: you need to be able to take some materials and
Speaker 1: build out structures, then something that would be self assembling,
Speaker 1: just given the right kind of energy would be really useful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Let's say we want to establish a Mars colony for humans, Okay,
Speaker 1: and we have talked about that in the past obviously,
Speaker 1: so that's a that's a big step right now, but
Speaker 1: clearly people are looking towards it, So it's a good
Speaker 1: thing to think about how we would actually do it.
Speaker 1: We put some astronauts down on the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: they need a protective structure in which to live. Uh,
Speaker 1: where does that come from? Right? I mean, and it's
Speaker 1: not going to be exactly easy to do construction on
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars. Yeah, they're they're already limited by
Speaker 1: the fact that they're in space suits. They can they
Speaker 1: really don't need to be spending extended periods of time
Speaker 1: out on the surface of Mars in the first place, because,
Speaker 1: as we've established in a previous episode, Mars is trying
Speaker 1: to kill you. So you want to spend as as
Speaker 1: little time on the surface, especially unprotected as possible, because
Speaker 1: you're still prone to things like radiation, let alone the
Speaker 1: toxic environment of Mars. So one possible application would be
Speaker 1: to have this four D printed stuff to help make
Speaker 1: at least the shell of some of the habitats that
Speaker 1: you would want, right and there the various uh um well,
Speaker 1: like the Mars One Project talks about using rovers to
Speaker 1: help build stuff and construct things, which on its face
Speaker 1: seems really really complicated to me. Like I I have
Speaker 1: a hard time believing that we could build robots that
Speaker 1: would be sophisticated enough to help doing that. But but
Speaker 1: if they're using stuff like this, that could really go
Speaker 1: a long way the process share, you know, cut down
Speaker 1: a little bit on that programming and or the durability
Speaker 1: of the robot itself, right. Yeah. Also, I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: about how unwieldy it is to transport construction materials. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen like a truck on the way
Speaker 1: to a construction site and all the junk it's got
Speaker 1: trying to fit together on the bed um and clearly
Speaker 1: you couldn't it couldn't already be put together because there's
Speaker 1: no space then, right, so you have so you just
Speaker 1: flow the entire house. You just put rockets on the
Speaker 1: bottom the whole house, on the oversized load on the
Speaker 1: back of it as it's flying off. Instead, you get
Speaker 1: there with your for D printer and you've got just
Speaker 1: bulk material basically that's not as unwieldy to transportenttridges that
Speaker 1: hold the hold the stuff that you're printing out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it there on the surface of Mars, goes ahead
Speaker 1: and prints out the parts that you need, and so
Speaker 1: they can reconfigure and interlock however you need them to
Speaker 1: make the structure you're going to live in. Yeah. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that makes, you know, far more sense to me than
Speaker 1: trying to rely on essentially a slightly more sophisticated version
Speaker 1: of the curiosity rover. Right. I mean, I think about
Speaker 1: the Curiosity Rover, and it is an amazing piece of technology,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong. I think that is one of
Speaker 1: the most phenomenal achievements for NASA post Moon landing. But
Speaker 1: that being said, I can't imagine it building a house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It doesn't have and it's not like you
Speaker 1: could guide it easily because the amount of time it
Speaker 1: takes to get data from what minimum fourteen minute time laps.
Speaker 1: It all depends on the position of Mars and Earth
Speaker 1: in relation to one another. And also, I mean even
Speaker 1: which side of Mars is facing which side of Earth.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of that plays apart, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to in real time guide the robot.
Speaker 1: It would have to be able to do a lot
Speaker 1: of this autonomously, right, And that's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that autonomous robots aren't actually that good at. I mean,
Speaker 1: you might be sitting there thinking like, oh, but robots
Speaker 1: build our cars and stuff all the time, but but
Speaker 1: that's in a very specific environment and in which things
Speaker 1: have been very specifically laid out for. It does one job.
Speaker 1: It only has one job, and if you had if
Speaker 1: you had changed that up somehow, it's not like the
Speaker 1: robots could adjust to the new layout, right, It's not
Speaker 1: like they could suddenly uh realize that things were different
Speaker 1: and react to that. It's just they would try to
Speaker 1: keep doing what they usually do on top of all that.
Speaker 1: I mean a rover for construction. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: how exactly much work can you get done with a
Speaker 1: solar powered bulldozer. I mean, one would wonder what kind
Speaker 1: of I mean, there might be some other form of
Speaker 1: power sell aboard it, but I wouldn't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: because that just is the way that Mars one has suggested.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think using like a four D approach
Speaker 1: would cut back on that. Now, whether or not four
Speaker 1: D afford D approach would be sophisticated enough to meet
Speaker 1: the needs of the Mars one colony by the time
Speaker 1: they actually start to launch things at least according to
Speaker 1: their own launch plan, that that's a different story. I
Speaker 1: just think that that would be a more It seems
Speaker 1: like a more promising approach to me than what I
Speaker 1: have read so far. I'd be very skeptical about it
Speaker 1: developing that fast, but I do think that leads us
Speaker 1: to the interesting question of how it advanced. Exactly can
Speaker 1: this kind of thing get, Yeah, let's have it. Let's
Speaker 1: have a discussion about that. I've got I've got an
Speaker 1: alternative to this too that i want to talk about,
Speaker 1: but I'll tag that on at the end. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about what what do you see, Joe as
Speaker 1: like the the let's let's imagine that this this approach
Speaker 1: really does pan out, that we learn uh, a lot
Speaker 1: of the different advantages and a lot of different ways
Speaker 1: of utilizing this. What do you see as some future
Speaker 1: like really far future applications. Right now, we've got basically
Speaker 1: art projects. Where else can it go? So right now,
Speaker 1: you can make a string that curls into this knotted
Speaker 1: up shape, or say a sheet that folds into a cube.
Speaker 1: But if you were to shrink that way down and
Speaker 1: make billions of them, and make millions of different kinds
Speaker 1: of them that all interact in ways that produce complex
Speaker 1: macro effects. What you're talking about is something that's not
Speaker 1: all that similar from how living things work. I mean
Speaker 1: what a human body is, or what an insect is,
Speaker 1: or pretty much any living material right yeah, is long
Speaker 1: chains of molecules that they're polypeptides that are the I
Speaker 1: mean no acid sequence in them. Determines what shape they
Speaker 1: curl up into, and the shapes they curl up into
Speaker 1: interact in interesting ways that produce macro effects. First with
Speaker 1: with hydrogen bombs, hydrogen bombs, hydrogen bonds, goodness, migracious, and
Speaker 1: uh and then and then in tertiary structures with them
Speaker 1: with with sell fites and all kinds of other stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, when we had this quick discussion before
Speaker 1: we came in here to record, I pointed out that
Speaker 1: when you think about nature has had billions of years,
Speaker 1: really millions and billions of years too to really experiment
Speaker 1: and see which of these these shapes are the ones
Speaker 1: that work. Because anything that doesn't work doesn't live, and
Speaker 1: if it doesn't live, then you're you discard that and
Speaker 1: you go on. So it's not like it's necessarily any
Speaker 1: sort of intelligent experimentation. It's just that by the very
Speaker 1: nature of the way life works, we see which shapes
Speaker 1: are the ones that actually end up being uh advent tageous.
Speaker 1: So the question is can we catch up with you know,
Speaker 1: billions of years of evolution in twenty to fifty years
Speaker 1: of R and D well, I mean, that's the years
Speaker 1: that's that's our standard that's our standard prediction. Right. I'm skeptical,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a really interesting idea, and I
Speaker 1: think that in theory it's not impossible because of what
Speaker 1: I just said about how you know you can create
Speaker 1: incredibly complex and powerful things without micro chips or electro
Speaker 1: mechanical motors. Yeah, it does. We had this discussion earlier
Speaker 1: as well about let's say that you are using this
Speaker 1: four D stuff and it's able to take on multiple
Speaker 1: shapes depending upon whatever seth circumstances are applied to it. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's say that you have created some kind of
Speaker 1: of of of movable robotic structure. It's got some computational abilities,
Speaker 1: it's able to perceive and move around its environment in
Speaker 1: some way, but it doesn't have any electronic part. But
Speaker 1: doesn't have electronic parts. It's all this four D printing approach.
Speaker 1: And the first response I had was I can't under
Speaker 1: I can't quite grasp how you would apply the right
Speaker 1: type of energy and the right amounts to the right
Speaker 1: spots within this robot to make it coordinated and have
Speaker 1: it move in in a meaningful way. But Joe, you
Speaker 1: had an interesting counterpoint, right, Yeah, Well, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that either that seems just too impossible to me. But
Speaker 1: then again, I think if you went and you talk
Speaker 1: to somebody in the nineteen forties when computers were nascent,
Speaker 1: I mean, would they really think that electrons would someday
Speaker 1: be as programmable as they are now in our computers.
Speaker 1: I certainly think that. And and of course this, this
Speaker 1: is this completely bears out if you look at all
Speaker 1: the predictions that people had back in the early early
Speaker 1: days of computers. They talked about, you know, one day
Speaker 1: these computers will be small, all enough to fit in
Speaker 1: a room in your house, and you'll be able to
Speaker 1: use it. But that's about able to compute five digit
Speaker 1: addition probably well. Essentially, essentially, they could not foresee the
Speaker 1: development of miniaturization. The transistor was something that they could
Speaker 1: not necessarily predict in those early days, and therefore that
Speaker 1: did not factor into their vision of the future with computers.
Speaker 1: Their vision of the future of computers was completely based
Speaker 1: on the state of the art as it was at
Speaker 1: that time, right And clearly, if you've read if you've
Speaker 1: read science fiction from the time, it's not the people
Speaker 1: were incapable of imagining that. It's just that they were
Speaker 1: incapable of imagining it practically. It was more like if
Speaker 1: they imagined it, it was you know, most most of
Speaker 1: the computers that you would read about, even in science
Speaker 1: fiction back in those days, would still be these enormous
Speaker 1: devices that would take up huge amounts of space because
Speaker 1: they didn't think, oh, well, there's going to be this
Speaker 1: development where we're gonna shrink these components and still maintain
Speaker 1: and even increase their power over time. So from that
Speaker 1: same perspective, I could say, you know what, Joe, You're right,
Speaker 1: I'm basing my my skepticism about reaching that point simply
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking about the state of the art as
Speaker 1: it is today. But who's to say there won't be
Speaker 1: some development maybe a year from now, maybe tomorrow, where
Speaker 1: it makes all of those those concerns I have. Moot,
Speaker 1: You're you're using your intuitions, and these intuitions usually serve
Speaker 1: us well, right, but but sometimes sometimes they're This is
Speaker 1: why predicting the future is such a tricky thing, because
Speaker 1: there's so many different elements that we cannot possibly predict.
Speaker 1: Uh that that happened, and then it suddenly changes everything
Speaker 1: and you think, wow, I I was not thinking big
Speaker 1: enough I'm excited in the short term about combining these
Speaker 1: kind of materials sciences with with electronic robotics. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we we have talked about three D printing electronics,
Speaker 1: and um, if you take some of these materials and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hook them up to very basic computers hardwire
Speaker 1: them together, you could you could construct chains nodes that
Speaker 1: would that that would be you know, programmable, and that
Speaker 1: would would uh carry instructions back and forth along the
Speaker 1: chain into you know, telling the materials what to do
Speaker 1: and where to apply the heat to bend something, or
Speaker 1: where to apply the water to create a certain effect.
Speaker 1: This is very similar to something the other thing I
Speaker 1: was going to talk about, the alternative to four D printing.
Speaker 1: That's taking a similar approach to for D printing in
Speaker 1: the sense of materials that can assemble themselves in different ways,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a different it's a different pathway
Speaker 1: to that, which is the whole idea of the self
Speaker 1: reconfigurable modular robot, similar to what you're talking about here.
Speaker 1: And they've been playing with this at the Self Assembly
Speaker 1: Lab back in two thousand and eight, two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: they were constructing these macrobots and DESSI bots that that
Speaker 1: are that are basically just robotic versions of that of
Speaker 1: that chain of plot stick that you put in the
Speaker 1: water and then it folds up into something different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've seen some interesting approaches with this. Now, technically
Speaker 1: what I've seen is, uh, these modular robots tend to
Speaker 1: look like little cubes or other some other simple shape polygon,
Speaker 1: and then they can join together to make you know,
Speaker 1: each of these is sort of its own little autonomous unit,
Speaker 1: but they can join together to form vultron I me,
Speaker 1: you know, a larger robot. But but see, it's if
Speaker 1: they can form in different ways. So for example, you
Speaker 1: might see one that ends up forming essentially legs to
Speaker 1: let it crawl over an object. But let's say it
Speaker 1: comes up to a tunnel, like it's crawling over rocks
Speaker 1: and it's doing just fine, but then comes up to
Speaker 1: a tunnel that's too small for it to crawl through
Speaker 1: based on its it's it's shape right then and there,
Speaker 1: so it reconfigures itself into a snake format and then
Speaker 1: uses some snake slithering like motion to propel itself through
Speaker 1: the tunnel until it gets to the other side. And
Speaker 1: then maybe it reconfigures itself into a new shape based
Speaker 1: upon the terrain that's on the other side. Now, this
Speaker 1: is in its current form, still very very young, just
Speaker 1: like the four deep printing is. So the designs are
Speaker 1: when you look at them, I mean, they blow my mind.
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing what's been done so far, But
Speaker 1: it's still pretty primitive stuff. They can't get down to
Speaker 1: teeny tiny levels of precision. But let's say that we
Speaker 1: extend this form of of reconfiguration and self assembly forward
Speaker 1: and we think, well, maybe we're able to miniaturize that
Speaker 1: and make it even more sophisticated. You could have robots.
Speaker 1: They're essentially collections, kind of like a hive of various
Speaker 1: little autonomous units that can self assemble, reassemble, reconfigure numerous
Speaker 1: times based upon whatever the task is that needs to do.
Speaker 1: And if you go even further, you've got the well,
Speaker 1: you've got the one. But in furniture format, y'all, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about taking nanotechnology that can make macro sized furniture
Speaker 1: based upon your whim and then your whim and then
Speaker 1: kill your guests. Right, But no, the the idea here
Speaker 1: being that you actually have nano materials that can self
Speaker 1: assemble and reconfigure based upon whatever it is you need
Speaker 1: them to do. That's kind of like the super science
Speaker 1: fiction version of these two different pathways. Now, it may
Speaker 1: very well be that neither of these end up developing
Speaker 1: into that. It could be that they converge and together
Speaker 1: they develop into that. It's too early to say, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who really are excited
Speaker 1: about this idea of the future where we have you know,
Speaker 1: you don't you don't have to go out and buy
Speaker 1: a new couch. You just program your couch to have
Speaker 1: a new shape. I like that. I like this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, you can decide to you know, I
Speaker 1: have decided to change the way I live. I want
Speaker 1: my entire living space to be a completely different style
Speaker 1: because I am no longer that version of me anymore.
Speaker 1: And then with a couple of programming clicks and clacks
Speaker 1: and whatever user interface there happens to be, you could
Speaker 1: do that. Or let's say that your robot cat is
Speaker 1: scratching up your couch. Um it could if the couch
Speaker 1: has this technology, it could be self healing. It could
Speaker 1: it could mend itself. You could have a self healing couch.
Speaker 1: I wonder, and I'm not saying this is necessarily possible,
Speaker 1: but I'm just wondering how programmable materials might figure into
Speaker 1: larger infrastructure, like say, buildings or bridges or highways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, would it would it be useful to think
Speaker 1: about this type of material in that setting? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it possible that in some way a building built
Speaker 1: of programmable materials would be able to, say, withstand an
Speaker 1: earthquake or something like that. Interesting, it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: again based upon what we've seen right now, it's it's
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine. But then if you were to design
Speaker 1: the building so that the kinetic movement actually strengthened the
Speaker 1: building as opposed to weakened it, or in a different way,
Speaker 1: say if a building responded to shaking by becoming less rigid,
Speaker 1: which might be exactly what you want actually, so that
Speaker 1: so there's more give and it can ride out the earthquake.
Speaker 1: For example. Yeah, if you've ever seen photos of of
Speaker 1: tension bridges during earthquakes or something like that, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that kind of that kind of if it were all
Speaker 1: made of steel cable and was therefore tensile, then then
Speaker 1: it could end up ripping apart. And being a terrible tragedy.
Speaker 1: I think, or you know, it could have the flexibility
Speaker 1: to to not to not tear apart. There's that too well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that the cool thing to me is that all of
Speaker 1: this type of technology has a lot of potential. Now,
Speaker 1: whether that potential ever gets realized, we'll have to wait
Speaker 1: and see. But it's exciting that people are working on
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff and it really is like a
Speaker 1: different way of going about manufacturing and construction than I
Speaker 1: had ever anticipated. It's not something I had never really
Speaker 1: imagined this kind of thing, and it's so cool to
Speaker 1: think that it's not just something that someone's imagined, it's
Speaker 1: stuff that people are actively working on. That's pretty awesome. Guys.
Speaker 1: If you have any comments, you want to chime in
Speaker 1: on the idea for d printing, or maybe there's some
Speaker 1: other future technology that you think is really exciting, you
Speaker 1: should join in on the discussion. Go to f W
Speaker 1: thinking dot com. That's where we have all the blog posts,
Speaker 1: we have the podcasts, we have the videos, we have
Speaker 1: lots of articles that are about the kind of subjects
Speaker 1: we're talking about. We want you to be part of
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