Nanotech: "Smart Fabrics"

Reidar Gunn writes: "This article is about nano technology... I read it over to make sure I was really reading what I read! Red to Blue cloths, sizes going from bigger to smaller... Wonder if they'll make wireless clothes with a subscription service, Yah never know! Logo changing shirts eh!"

Comments

subscription service

[paranoic]

Just what I'd want, a Microsoft shirt that reads "Hacked by Chinese"

I can see it now...

[krugdm]

Know someone you want to see killed? Hire someone to hack into his new turtleneck and set the size to "Petite" and strangle him to death.

Re:What about the textile industry?

[Snowfox]

A man is nothing without a job, unless man has a reason for existence, be it tilling the soil or repetitively inserting screws on an assembly line, he is nothing, for work maketh a man.

Nanotechnology changes all this - the technology does the work. With this new technology, it looks as though the textiles industry will be the first to suffer once again. Clothes will manufacture themselves, and the honest worker in the clothing industry will become as the ancient hand weavers, non-existent.

Feh. The degree to which we can coopt a technology for ourselves is the degree to which we remove control from the hands of our masters.

There's not much we can do to get our hands on our masters' looms, but once the replication is done by nanomites, we've gotten our hands on the machine - the control has moved outward as it did when mainframes gave way to PCs where Linux and the likes were born - the control has moved outward as it did when huge bandwidth went from just a few sites to everyone who could afford cable and DSL and peer to peer file sharing became/is becoming the norm - and when we can capture and successfully reprogram the little knitting machines that comprise a sweater, we'll find a new wealth there as well.

Don't fear the nanobots. Fear the legislation that will attempt to stop you from using them yourself.

I hope we can control this stuff remotely

[billcopc]

Red to Blue cloths, sizes going from bigger to smaller.

How about an IR-remote that changes baggy t-shirts into semi-sheer micro-bikinis ? :)

Luddites ...

[ian stevens]

Luddites - they smashed looms with an anti-technological passion

I did a research paper on Luddites a while ago where I delved into first-hand accounts of their actions as written in newspaper articles of the time and found that the Luddites were more against poor working conditions which the looms brought about than the looms themselves. The common misconception is that Luddites were anti-technology. This was not necessarily so. The looms were a symbol of oppression which included dangerous working conditions and low wages.

If I could only find that paper, I'd be able to further argue my point.

ian.

The Hype vs The Reality

[InfoVore]

The Hype: Nanotech clothes are coming!!!

The Reality: Some innovations are being explored in the textile industry. Some of these are very good ideas (sports socks that absorb bacterial odors). Some of these are very bad ideas (a jacket with built in cell phone and mp3 player. where do I put the batteries? what if I want to wear a different jacket?)

The one thing that intrigues me about the article is not that big companies like DuPont are exploring new "smart" textiles, it is that the popular media has absorbed the idea that molecular nanotechnology is coming and is going to be a Big Thing. The idea of smart clothing is no surprise to anyone who read Drexler's ENGINES OF CREATION back in the late 80's, or for that matter anyone who reads a fair amount of SF, or has the least bit of technical knowledge and imagination. I find it simply fascinating and funny that popular culture is "discovering" these ideas many decades after they were first proposed.

What is even funnier is that the jounalists and speculators are making the same innane impractical speculations they have always made. Baby pajamas with a built in cell phone? Get a life. Remember these are the successors of those visionaries in the 50's and 60's who said we all would be driving nuclear cars, flying personal helicopters, and using too-cheap-to-meter electricity by now. Yeah, right.

There were many good ideas mentioned in the article. I hope that Nano-Tex, et. al. are able to bring out some of these products: Bio-monitoring clothing, color/pattern changing cloth, variable permiability cloth, etc.

Just do us all a favor. Leave the cell phones out of it.

IV

Re:Towelly!

[cloudmaster]

I don't see anything about the fabrics "getting high and just wandering off" in the article...

Great...

[ryanvm]

Now I'll have to listen to my towels saying:
Oh man, I'm so high I don't even know what's going on.

Hint: It's not funny if you didn't see last week's South Park - and it's probably not funny even if you did.

That's nothing!

[prototype]

I already have clothes that change sizes, fade and come pre-wrinkled. It's called being a bachelor. Why would I want some Borg technology injected into my laundry heap to do this? There's already something crawling inside of it, I just don't know what yet.

liB

Re:What about the textile industry?

[gad_zuki!]

We called them the Luddites - they smashed looms with an anti-technological passion first expressed among the Satanic Mills of 19th Century Lancashire.

Its a commonly known fact that luddites were more against working conditions in cramped spaces costing about 2 fingers per hour than the technology itself. The term was later picked up and changed into Neo-Luddite which is more or less what you're describing.

I don't think a Trotsky-esque world will emerge after Nike unleashes underwear that makes farts smell like roses.

GPS in the collar?

[gnovos]

At least now the arrow underneath my "I'm with Stupid" shirt will always be pointing in the right direction...

Re:What about the textile industry?

[pcwhalen]

Maybe you don't get it.

I hate to quote lunatics, but it was Ross Perot that said "We want jobs to make microchips, not potato chips." The idea is that the higher up on the food chain you are, the better the view.

The same is true with knowledge: the more you know about the world, its people and how to control it all, the less shit you are forced to eat. Now, a little excrement is consumed by all, but the people with the knowledge get to say who eats the most. Same with any technology: train our people to use it so they are at the top of the food chain.

Nanotech will be in the hands of those who understand it and can use it. Its benefits will trickle from the haves to the have-nots only if those in the know benefit from it. Capitalism reigns, Trotsky remains dead in Mexico with an axe in the back. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

My brothers and sisters: the only path to freedom it the one you make for yourself. Learn what other people value, use it industriously and bask in the warm glow of capitalism. Let untrained, unwilling to learn, undisaplined people till the soil and turn the screws.