[00:00:05.11] So that's a real pleasure to have you see with us today. [00:00:09.06] [00:00:10.10] After about 3 degree in English the University of Michigan go blue. [00:00:14.16] [00:00:15.19] In their own bathroom he also came with the University of Wisconsin. [00:00:20.04] [00:00:21.13] Into Georgia Tech in 2000 and he's currently a professor of science [00:00:26.10] [00:00:26.10] fiction studies in the school of literature and [00:00:29.11] [00:00:29.11] indication she's off work author of numerous books and articles. [00:00:34.06] [00:00:35.06] As well as. [00:00:35.22] [00:00:37.00] Coming to. [00:00:37.12] [00:00:38.18] When we were researching when the most recently last year. [00:00:42.22] [00:00:44.00] That on college. [00:00:44.21] [00:00:45.23] This thing which. [00:00:46.11] [00:00:48.00] I will turn it over. [00:00:48.20] [00:00:51.06] So thanks to David for that introduction and thanks to all of you for [00:00:54.11] [00:00:54.11] being here today it's exciting to walk across campus and [00:00:57.12] [00:00:57.12] talk with my colleagues So as you know and as David so cleverly pointed out and [00:01:02.16] [00:01:02.16] as you know from reading all the promo materials I am indeed a professor of [00:01:05.23] [00:01:05.23] science fiction studies and my research just to give you a little sense of what I [00:01:10.03] [00:01:10.03] do before we walk into the talk here I'm interested in science fiction as a global [00:01:14.06] [00:01:14.06] language that allows us to communicate our experiences with science technology and [00:01:18.08] [00:01:18.08] society to each other across centuries continents and [00:01:20.23] [00:01:20.23] cultures within my own disciplinary work I'm most well known for [00:01:25.23] [00:01:25.23] my record on the recovery of lost voices in the discovery of new voices in science [00:01:30.07] [00:01:30.07] fiction most of that work has been on the recovery and discovery of women's voices [00:01:34.00] [00:01:34.00] and science fiction but I also do work on African and African-American voices and [00:01:38.17] [00:01:38.17] on the last voices of science in science fiction as well and that's been fun and [00:01:42.18] [00:01:42.18] that's been a real opportunity to work with people across Georgia Tech. [00:01:46.11] [00:01:47.12] Now in terms of my media and cross disciplinary work I'm interested [00:01:51.21] [00:01:51.21] in looking at science fiction as a window into cultural history so [00:01:55.01] [00:01:55.01] what I do is when directors or journalists call me up and they say [00:01:59.12] [00:01:59.12] hey can you tell me something about the history of spice in science fiction or [00:02:03.06] [00:02:03.06] the history of nanotechnology in science fiction I go ahead and [00:02:06.11] [00:02:06.11] I put these together and I help sort of walk them through it so they look like [00:02:09.19] [00:02:09.19] they know what they're talking about and if they don't necessarily so [00:02:13.02] [00:02:13.02] to give you some examples of that I've talked about the history of monsters and [00:02:16.09] [00:02:16.09] aliens on the AMC mini series James Cameron story of science fiction [00:02:21.06] [00:02:21.06] I've done histories of new reproductive technologies for the b.b.c. [00:02:24.17] [00:02:24.17] and histories of spices in fiction and culture for Food and Wine magazine and [00:02:29.14] [00:02:29.14] I also do this kind of cross disciplinary work at Georgia Tech and in fact it's [00:02:32.16] [00:02:32.16] been one of the really fun things about being a science fiction studies professor [00:02:36.04] [00:02:36.04] at a technical institute as opposed to a Liberal Arts Institute I've had [00:02:39.15] [00:02:39.15] the opportunity to partner with people in college of engineering and [00:02:43.06] [00:02:43.06] our eye on work and [00:02:44.05] [00:02:44.05] nanotechnology I've worked in the cross disciplinary astrobiology initiative and [00:02:49.13] [00:02:49.13] just recently I finished up a project with the librarian College of Sciences [00:02:53.09] [00:02:53.09] where we did a multimedia exhibit on the elements in science fiction and that's [00:02:56.16] [00:02:56.16] actually still in the Georgia Tech library if you're interested in checking that out. [00:03:00.13] [00:03:02.03] Ok so I'm happy to be here today because a lot of that cross disciplinary work I'm [00:03:06.07] [00:03:06.07] mentioning actually began way back in the 2000 and oughts with my work on [00:03:11.03] [00:03:11.03] nanotechnology and I was working with 2 faculty members from public policy and [00:03:16.01] [00:03:16.01] someone from g.t. our eye on that and it's something that I've continued to work on [00:03:19.14] [00:03:19.14] often on looking at cultural histories of nano science and nanotechnology for [00:03:24.10] [00:03:24.10] the last decade and so I was really pleased to be invited to come back and [00:03:27.14] [00:03:27.14] talk with you today give me a chance to update what I've been thinking about and [00:03:31.23] [00:03:31.23] so I hope you're getting ready you know fasten your seat belt because we're going [00:03:35.05] [00:03:35.05] to do about 250 years of history in about a half hour here so I hope you're ready to [00:03:40.01] [00:03:40.01] go and if there's anything I miss or anything you want to add to this please [00:03:43.18] [00:03:43.18] let me know either during the talk or afterwards I don't really care when you do [00:03:47.10] [00:03:47.10] it because this is again part of the fun thing about this kind of work is when I [00:03:50.10] [00:03:50.10] get to collaborate with people in other disciplines you're often thinking about [00:03:53.22] [00:03:53.22] different aspects of this than I am and [00:03:55.11] [00:03:55.11] may have other information to bring to bear on this all right so [00:03:58.20] [00:03:58.20] you ready 250 years 30 minutes we can do it right about 250 years and [00:04:02.18] [00:04:02.18] 25 minutes I think that sound rounds out better Ok so here we go then. [00:04:07.03] [00:04:08.15] So. [00:04:09.03] [00:04:10.07] What I wanted to do is you know and talk about 1st the relations of nano science [00:04:14.04] [00:04:14.04] and technology and science fiction are and of course I cleverly put my thesis there [00:04:17.22] [00:04:17.22] for you so you can figure it out now as we all know physicist [00:04:22.04] [00:04:22.04] Richard Fineman was generally credited with formulating the concept or [00:04:25.20] [00:04:25.20] the sort of idea of nanoscience a new technology is a discipline in 1959 after [00:04:30.17] [00:04:30.17] dinner talk to the American with American physicists association called the talk was [00:04:34.23] [00:04:34.23] called there's plenty of room at the bottom in that talk if you haven't read it [00:04:38.20] [00:04:38.20] find many claims that quote unquote There is nothing in the law of physics that [00:04:42.07] [00:04:42.07] prevents us from engineering at a very small and perhaps even molecular scale and [00:04:46.10] [00:04:46.10] he goes on in that talk to give some examples of fun things we might do [00:04:49.23] [00:04:49.23] like we could write the Bible on the head of a pin We could [00:04:52.13] [00:04:52.13] put the entire Library of Congress on the head of a pin We could build tiny cars for [00:04:56.08] [00:04:56.08] answers to drive and so it goes from things I think from a sort of. [00:04:59.09] [00:05:00.16] Sublime and grand to the playful and speculative and it's no surprise that he's [00:05:05.09] [00:05:05.09] doing that because everyone in and out of culture is thinking in sort of science [00:05:09.21] [00:05:09.21] fictional ways about small scale engineering at that point and find out of [00:05:13.05] [00:05:13.05] course is not alone in this I'll come back to find men later in this talk and talk [00:05:16.21] [00:05:16.21] about where he got all his crazy ideas people always ask that of science fiction [00:05:20.10] [00:05:20.10] people now I get to ask it of a scientist and I feel good about that all right but [00:05:25.10] [00:05:25.10] one thing we really realize is that there's a huge history of engineering of [00:05:29.17] [00:05:29.17] stories about engineering things below the scale of human perception and [00:05:33.04] [00:05:33.04] that begins back in 1726 with Jonathan Swift Gulliver Trek Gulliver's Travels and [00:05:39.13] [00:05:39.13] you know it's no surprise of course that I've taken one of the pictures one [00:05:42.05] [00:05:42.05] of the most famous images here and it's actually if you google Gulliver's Travels [00:05:45.16] [00:05:45.16] this image is the one that comes up most often So [00:05:48.12] [00:05:48.12] these images of scale usually it's one Gulliver is large and the the little [00:05:52.05] [00:05:52.05] are people whose names I'm completely spacing right now tie him up and [00:05:55.07] [00:05:55.07] trap him because he's dangerous and untoward in their world but [00:05:58.06] [00:05:58.06] of course later he'll travel elsewhere where the scale will shift and he will be [00:06:01.13] [00:06:01.13] the very small one and others will be very large and he'll have to negotiate that. [00:06:05.07] [00:06:06.11] Stories about small scale engineering really take off in the 1800s [00:06:10.04] [00:06:10.04] both with the rise of science fiction as a commercially viable genre and also with [00:06:14.09] [00:06:14.09] the popularization of microscopes and telescopes as every day people begin [00:06:20.09] [00:06:20.09] to realize that they too can use tools to look at things that different scale. [00:06:23.12] [00:06:25.10] So we're going to talk about like I said today is that since the 5th all over his [00:06:29.17] [00:06:29.17] travels and especially since 1900 We've seen stories about small scale engineering [00:06:33.20] [00:06:33.20] go through sort of 4 broad phases in development and these phases [00:06:38.06] [00:06:38.06] map not surprisingly with shifts in our scientific and social history. [00:06:42.21] [00:06:44.00] Ok So that sounds a little vague but let me get into it here with you so [00:06:47.19] [00:06:47.19] in the 1st phase which is the Lara longest phase of small scale engineering [00:06:51.19] [00:06:51.19] storytelling we have stories about exploring miniature worlds and [00:06:55.04] [00:06:55.04] like I said if you see here the star this tradition goes on for [00:06:57.20] [00:06:57.20] about 100 years through the rise of science fiction as it becomes a unique [00:07:02.07] [00:07:02.07] popular genre with its own authors and editors and fans and publishing venue. [00:07:06.23] [00:07:09.14] All right so what we see is during this period stories generally feature [00:07:13.07] [00:07:13.07] technologies that allow us to examine the miniature world usually with [00:07:18.21] [00:07:18.21] complex listening devices like radios and microscopes and also occasionally you'll [00:07:23.17] [00:07:23.17] see people using chemicals or devices that will allow them to enter and explore [00:07:27.04] [00:07:27.04] those worlds by shrinking themselves or more likely an unwitting lab assistant [00:07:32.03] [00:07:32.03] because who wants to go themselves when they can send someone else Right exactly. [00:07:35.18] [00:07:36.23] What you find in these stories is interesting Lee even when the scientists [00:07:39.18] [00:07:39.18] do something that to us would seem kind of crazy like [00:07:42.06] [00:07:42.06] shrinking their lab assistant without their permission and [00:07:44.20] [00:07:44.20] then mentioning that they have no way to get them back to human scale ever so [00:07:47.18] [00:07:47.18] have fun in the subatomic world for the rest of your life. [00:07:49.21] [00:07:51.13] This is what's interesting though is that that kind of science which might seem to [00:07:54.23] [00:07:54.23] us mad is almost never condemned in these early stories it's actually seen as sort [00:07:58.00] [00:07:58.00] of exciting and maybe even necessary that someone has to have this kind of crazy [00:08:01.17] [00:08:01.17] vision in order for us to be able to penetrate and explore these worlds. [00:08:06.04] [00:08:06.04] So these are some of the most famous early stories of this type that I got here and [00:08:10.19] [00:08:10.19] I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about all of them but [00:08:13.22] [00:08:13.22] I wanted them up here so you could see some of these if you're interested they're [00:08:16.19] [00:08:16.19] all online and available for free please feel free if at any point want to take [00:08:20.08] [00:08:20.08] photos of any of my slides or anything you know knock yourselves out that's what [00:08:23.13] [00:08:23.13] they're here for Also I have almost all of these stories in my file somewhere so [00:08:28.22] [00:08:28.22] if anyone ever wants one feel free to hit me up so what's interesting about these [00:08:33.04] [00:08:33.04] stories is like I said they're all about the accumulation of new knowledge and [00:08:36.19] [00:08:36.19] individuals they may be transformed by their experience of these new worlds and [00:08:40.00] [00:08:40.00] sometimes in troubling ways not everyone lives through this experience but [00:08:44.00] [00:08:44.00] again the world as a whole is generally appreciative of the effort and [00:08:47.04] [00:08:47.04] admires the sacrifice of those who get very large or [00:08:49.14] [00:08:49.14] very small for the sake of science a couple interesting things I point out here [00:08:54.15] [00:08:54.15] that's James O'Brien's the diamonds lens is often considered one of [00:08:57.10] [00:08:57.10] the earliest stories of this type and [00:08:59.13] [00:08:59.13] O'Brien himself sold microscopes so no surprise that he was writing stories and [00:09:04.13] [00:09:04.13] his is a story about a man who looks through a microscope and [00:09:07.13] [00:09:07.13] finds a whole world including a beautiful young woman in the drop of water and [00:09:12.03] [00:09:12.03] of course he's so in love and he's like that so all over head and [00:09:15.01] [00:09:15.01] heels and it forgets that he put the drop of water on the slide and [00:09:18.18] [00:09:18.18] he lets it evaporate kills his true love it's a very sad story. [00:09:22.20] [00:09:24.05] Now how this was going to actually sell microscopes given that tragic ending [00:09:27.21] [00:09:27.21] I'm not entirely sure maybe people were hoping that if they bought a microscope [00:09:31.20] [00:09:31.20] they would find their one true love in a drop of water and not kill that person [00:09:36.05] [00:09:36.05] all right so that's really cool and then look at the girl on the Golan Adams but [00:09:41.03] [00:09:41.03] Ray Cummings it's a very similar story once again a man uses a microscope [00:09:45.07] [00:09:45.07] to explore this time Adam and he finds a beautiful young woman [00:09:50.00] [00:09:50.00] once again in the Adam Fortunately this time things go better for [00:09:53.19] [00:09:53.19] our hero he manages to invent a device that allows him to shrink himself so [00:09:57.18] [00:09:57.18] he can go be with his beloved in the world of the Adam where they have so [00:10:01.11] [00:10:01.11] many adventures that Ray Cummings had to write 3 sequels to it. [00:10:04.06] [00:10:05.07] So. [00:10:06.09] [00:10:06.09] And as you can see it was also so popular it got the cover art it was a big [00:10:09.21] [00:10:09.21] deal in the early science fiction magazines to write the cool story that got [00:10:12.20] [00:10:12.20] the cover art and so it's interesting so O'Brien this is a reprint [00:10:17.03] [00:10:17.03] from one of the very 1st science fiction magazines in fact I think it might be from [00:10:20.05] [00:10:20.05] amazing 1 point one which was the 1st ever science fiction magazine and [00:10:24.00] [00:10:24.00] then here of course this is another early one Ray Cummings was 15 years old when he [00:10:28.10] [00:10:28.10] wrote the story for he goes back yeah and so he wrote it I think in 20 or [00:10:32.13] [00:10:32.13] 21 by the time it was published in this particular magazine he was much older but [00:10:36.21] [00:10:36.21] I think it's interesting that only a 15 year old can imagine a happy ending [00:10:40.09] [00:10:40.09] to these kinds of strange encounters between people of scale because it is true [00:10:45.00] [00:10:45.00] after this it's all going to go downhill from here I got to tell you [00:10:47.22] [00:10:47.22] we've got more stories but it's not going to go so well for anyone in these stories. [00:10:51.14] [00:10:52.15] So in paperwork and doctors the man from the atom [00:10:56.15] [00:10:56.15] things actually move in the opposite direction and [00:10:58.15] [00:10:58.15] here he's really capturing the excitement about telescopes that we see at the end. [00:11:02.23] [00:11:04.07] At the turn of the century and so here are scientists actually shrinks or [00:11:08.10] [00:11:08.10] doesn't shrink his lab assistant that blows him up gigantic And then of course [00:11:13.11] [00:11:13.11] realizes he's never going to be able to turn him back to a human sized person so [00:11:17.10] [00:11:17.10] our person just gets bigger and bigger and just explores the world up work rather [00:11:21.14] [00:11:21.14] than downward in scale that's actually an anomaly most people like the shrinking [00:11:25.16] [00:11:25.16] stories and of course then by 1936 you have Henry has as he has shrank which is [00:11:30.11] [00:11:30.11] my favorite title and one of my favorite stories this is again another story where [00:11:35.09] [00:11:35.09] a poor lab assistant gets shrunk without his permission and is told he's [00:11:39.10] [00:11:39.10] never coming back to normal size but you know what he's got a little radio that [00:11:42.23] [00:11:42.23] will shrink with him so he can stay in contact with the scientists Lucky him. [00:11:46.15] [00:11:47.18] And so the story is cool and it follows our hero as he shrinks and [00:11:52.11] [00:11:52.11] has all these adventures in different levels of atomic and subatomic world and [00:11:57.01] [00:11:57.01] at one point in the story he passes through a medium sized blue world [00:12:01.16] [00:12:01.16] where he's taken into custody by the police but a visionary. [00:12:05.21] [00:12:05.21] Writer named Henry Hass frees him and our narrator is so [00:12:10.23] [00:12:10.23] grateful that he shares his story with Hass who then writes it unpublished is [00:12:14.02] [00:12:14.02] that as he who shrank right all right so even if it was really science fiction and [00:12:18.20] [00:12:18.20] primitive in some ways it was at least playful enough to recognize that sort of [00:12:22.04] [00:12:22.04] own status in creating these stories so these are the early stories we get with [00:12:26.09] [00:12:26.09] miniature worlds and see if there's anything else I can tell you about these [00:12:30.07] [00:12:30.07] Or yeah so the Henry has a story like this it was featured [00:12:33.22] [00:12:33.22] in Amazing Stories which was one of the major magazines of the 1930 s. and [00:12:37.16] [00:12:37.16] it was reprinted in some of the 1st best of EMTALA G.'s and that is I've studied [00:12:42.02] [00:12:42.02] these no mean feat those editors were mean and they cut out everyone they disliked so [00:12:46.12] [00:12:46.12] obviously people thought he was a good guy and a good author and in 1978 Carl Sagan [00:12:50.22] [00:12:50.22] repopulate arise the story identifying it as quote unquote and entrancing [00:12:54.18] [00:12:54.18] cosmological speculation which is being seriously revived today and I think it's [00:12:59.01] [00:12:59.01] no surprise that there you are in that late seventy's as nanotechnology is [00:13:02.17] [00:13:02.17] becoming a sort of formal official discipline reaching the public imagination [00:13:06.11] [00:13:06.11] for the 1st time that people like Sagan are going to look back to these stories [00:13:11.02] [00:13:11.02] and see where we can use them to frame nanoscience and [00:13:14.20] [00:13:14.20] nanotechnology as it's emerging. [00:13:16.08] [00:13:18.00] All right. [00:13:18.12] [00:13:19.23] The next part of the next phase of these stories is mercifully much shorter [00:13:24.21] [00:13:24.21] just 30 years and these are the stories about engineering in an ant in and [00:13:30.02] [00:13:30.02] engineering miniature worlds either within them or [00:13:32.07] [00:13:32.07] actually engineering the worlds themselves. [00:13:34.10] [00:13:35.14] As you can see as you can see from the art things are going to get a lot more intense [00:13:39.19] [00:13:39.19] you can see as quite a bit more violence going on so [00:13:42.12] [00:13:42.12] at this point people are going to be both. [00:13:44.00] [00:13:45.04] Well we're going to see both positive and negative images of engineering in these [00:13:50.00] [00:13:50.00] kinds of worlds what you're going to see in this era as the authors draw upon [00:13:53.06] [00:13:53.06] science as including microbiology and biochemistry as well as new trends and [00:13:57.21] [00:13:57.21] technological miniature ization derived from World War 2 practices to focus on [00:14:02.17] [00:14:02.17] the controlled engineering at the subatomic level and I think that that's [00:14:06.07] [00:14:06.07] a key difference in those early stories we can look at the miniature world and [00:14:10.05] [00:14:10.05] we can maybe get into it but we don't have very much control over ourselves or [00:14:14.00] [00:14:14.00] anything within those worlds in these stories where as we move and [00:14:17.11] [00:14:17.11] this is the moment when when science fiction is really moving into its classic [00:14:20.10] [00:14:20.10] phase when people like Isaac Asimov and Arthur c. Clarke and Robert Heinlein and [00:14:24.16] [00:14:24.16] Judith Merril are doing a lot of writing really setting up the foundations for [00:14:28.04] [00:14:28.04] science fiction is a serious genre and I think it's no surprise that you're [00:14:31.08] [00:14:31.08] going to see authors thinking about small scale engineering in this era and [00:14:34.19] [00:14:34.19] again looking at both the pros and the cons of it. [00:14:37.06] [00:14:40.23] Even on the with the concert again it's about control right so [00:14:44.12] [00:14:44.12] what are you see is a sense of think about how do I as begin to think about how we [00:14:48.03] [00:14:48.03] apply knowledge in the real world we're going to think about how miniaturized [00:14:50.19] [00:14:50.19] engineering could radically transform the social world. [00:14:53.20] [00:14:55.03] Also beginning to think about this activity in some more nuanced ways and [00:14:58.03] [00:14:58.03] what's interesting in this period is you start to see authors identifying ways that [00:15:02.08] [00:15:02.08] small scale engineering can improve humans that that very much anticipate the later [00:15:06.22] [00:15:06.22] promises of nanoscience and nanotechnology So in these stories what you're going to [00:15:11.08] [00:15:11.08] find is that authors big as that as characters begin to engineer in miniature [00:15:15.17] [00:15:15.17] and even atomic and subatomic world they can suddenly do things like find [00:15:19.23] [00:15:19.23] new medical cures for seemingly incurable diseases create new power sources and [00:15:24.08] [00:15:24.08] even tap into unlimited energy and I doubt Laois to adapt to hostile space and [00:15:29.14] [00:15:29.14] water environments at the same time we're going to see in some of these stories [00:15:34.13] [00:15:34.13] a condemnation of the way that this will allow us to create truly date and [00:15:38.21] [00:15:38.21] really dangerous new weaponry and [00:15:40.19] [00:15:40.19] increase human to complete dependency on complex machines in problematic ways. [00:15:44.23] [00:15:46.04] So the 1st 2 stories are actually still very much in the sort of positive [00:15:49.14] [00:15:49.14] celebrate Torrie mode and very much embrace the idea that we can and [00:15:54.05] [00:15:54.05] do do controlled engineering at the subatomic level so [00:15:58.16] [00:15:58.16] while the wild by Robert Heinlein in 1942 [00:16:03.21] [00:16:03.21] is another story that you often see people in nanoscience and nanotechnology talk [00:16:07.23] [00:16:07.23] about it's really celebrated the foresight Institute website for instance as again [00:16:13.03] [00:16:13.03] not just if you know it's anyone know the story the story is about a misanthropic [00:16:16.23] [00:16:16.23] disabled scientist who's patents are stolen by a corporation and [00:16:21.09] [00:16:21.09] he goes to war against the corporation along the way he learns to trust people [00:16:25.18] [00:16:25.18] he finds the invisible world which becomes sort of a metaphor for the world of [00:16:29.14] [00:16:29.14] nanoscience and nanotechnology 1st small scale world and he invents Waldo's and [00:16:34.02] [00:16:34.02] the wall Those are the things that people are most interested in. [00:16:36.11] [00:16:37.13] He has a walled. [00:16:38.18] [00:16:38.18] Has a muscular disorder and so [00:16:41.16] [00:16:41.16] he lives in outer space new uses Waldo's his arms are too weak to do anything so [00:16:45.10] [00:16:45.10] he builds these these machines for himself this self replicating machines. [00:16:49.12] [00:16:50.17] That can do what his own hands can't do and what people are really interested in [00:16:54.23] [00:16:54.23] with the Waldos is that he talks about them as self replicating in scale shifting [00:16:58.17] [00:16:58.17] remote manipulators and that in that respect they very much anticipate [00:17:01.22] [00:17:01.22] the kinds of tools that people associate with nanoscience and nanotechnology today [00:17:06.01] [00:17:06.01] so on the one hand you see I have a sort of using magic as a shorthand for [00:17:09.17] [00:17:09.17] where we're headed with miniaturized engineer but at the same time trying to [00:17:12.12] [00:17:12.12] think really in some plausible ways about the tools we might use to get into that [00:17:17.03] [00:17:17.03] magical place surface tension is another really amazing stories from the 1950 s. [00:17:21.23] [00:17:21.23] by James Blish and this is a story about humans who we go to another world [00:17:26.02] [00:17:26.02] we're going to colonize the galaxy but we miss the planet we're supposed to be on we [00:17:30.02] [00:17:30.02] end up on a rock that has nothing but little like 2 inch puddles on it so [00:17:34.00] [00:17:34.00] what do we do we engineer ourselves down to be subatomic level people and so [00:17:38.20] [00:17:38.20] we reengineer all the colonists and then people go and they live in the puddles and [00:17:43.06] [00:17:43.06] guess what even when humans are really [00:17:45.03] [00:17:45.03] really tiny We still have great adventures we find illions to fight [00:17:49.03] [00:17:49.03] beautiful women to love and new puddles to explore as well so it's [00:17:54.01] [00:17:54.01] really a very much a story about human ingenuity and that idea that we really can [00:17:57.14] [00:17:57.14] control our future at all different kinds of levels and all different kinds [00:18:01.02] [00:18:01.02] of distances from ourselves so it's lovely that that continues but [00:18:04.19] [00:18:04.19] even as people like Heinlein and Blish are celebrating the possibilities of small [00:18:08.18] [00:18:08.18] scale engineering you're going to have other authors like Theodore Sturgeon and [00:18:11.23] [00:18:11.23] Philip k. **** who are very anxious about these things for [00:18:16.03] [00:18:16.03] those if you know Philip k. [00:18:17.03] [00:18:17.03] **** you may know a number of his movies Blade Runner Minority Report Philip k. [00:18:20.06] [00:18:20.06] **** never like science and technology everything that's going to be good and [00:18:24.09] [00:18:24.09] that is indeed true and 2nd variety this is a story about [00:18:28.16] [00:18:30.03] World War 3 where we invent. [00:18:32.01] [00:18:33.21] What is it with the. [00:18:34.11] [00:18:35.21] Self replicating machines that come to life and decide that humans [00:18:39.11] [00:18:39.11] are the problem and they come after us and if this sounds like a familiar plot to you [00:18:43.09] [00:18:43.09] it should because it's the basis of the 1995 horror film screamers right so [00:18:48.15] [00:18:48.15] here it's not as much about scale but **** is definitely thinking about a lot of [00:18:52.21] [00:18:52.21] the other issues that are eventually going to play into people's concerns especially [00:18:56.00] [00:18:56.00] when they start think about grey goo scenarios. [00:18:57.21] [00:18:59.23] Theodore Sturgeon I think in some ways is writing a book a more fantastic and [00:19:04.05] [00:19:04.05] a more horrifying more realistic story and sturgeons world we have a great and [00:19:09.03] [00:19:09.03] a brilliant inventor he can invent anything but he's not creative [00:19:12.09] [00:19:12.09] you have to tell him what to invent So in order to get over that hump he invents [00:19:16.23] [00:19:16.23] what he calls the neo Terex their little tiny tiny people microscopic people and [00:19:21.15] [00:19:21.15] he speeds up their evolution so that as they advance and evolve he can steal [00:19:25.17] [00:19:25.17] their ideas and make a profit off them eventually he goes mad with power and [00:19:30.15] [00:19:30.15] decides he's going to use this to take over the world and when people find out [00:19:34.05] [00:19:34.05] they try to stop him and he sets the neo Terex to building a dome over his house so [00:19:38.08] [00:19:38.08] no one can capture him Problem is he can't get out of the dome after that and [00:19:42.04] [00:19:42.04] the story ends like 50 years later with everyone looking at the dome and [00:19:45.06] [00:19:45.06] wondering what's going on inside and dreading the moment it comes out and so [00:19:49.16] [00:19:49.16] again right so he manages that fear in that nothing has come out yet but [00:19:53.21] [00:19:53.21] that sort of anxiety about this sort of engineering mad engineering at a level [00:19:57.15] [00:19:57.15] that you can't see happening at rates you can't see again I think these stories as [00:20:01.04] [00:20:01.04] bones of the story type are in a really play into later representations of nano [00:20:05.03] [00:20:05.03] science and nanotechnology proper All right let me see if there's anything [00:20:09.05] [00:20:09.05] else I have fun to say about the I want a good fun facts for you. [00:20:13.20] [00:20:16.10] Let me see look I think I gave you my with screamers now small scale engineering is [00:20:21.22] [00:20:21.22] not just for print authors by this point it goes to the movies as well by the 1940 [00:20:26.19] [00:20:26.19] s. and fifty's and what's interesting is that as I was going through and [00:20:31.04] [00:20:31.04] polling what people often talk about is precursors to nano films and [00:20:35.16] [00:20:35.16] looking at these engineering stories that what really strikes me is you probably [00:20:40.06] [00:20:40.06] won't know this but all 4 of these films are based on really really famous stories [00:20:43.20] [00:20:43.20] by really famous authors famous fan science fiction and fantasy authors and [00:20:48.11] [00:20:48.11] all of them are actually directed by really big name directors so [00:20:52.08] [00:20:52.08] Todd Browning that did a lot of horror films in the thirty's and [00:20:55.02] [00:20:55.02] forty's miss some of you might know his carnival film freaks for [00:20:57.17] [00:20:57.17] instance I see some people not in good that'll give you some sense of who he is [00:21:01.13] [00:21:01.13] he also did mask a vampire Ernest showed a Sat who directed the actor [00:21:06.12] [00:21:06.12] Cyclops also brought us King Kong and Mighty Joe Young I also have [00:21:11.23] [00:21:11.23] here Jack Arnold was one of them who did a pretty Incredible Shrinking Man was one [00:21:15.21] [00:21:15.21] of the most famous science fiction actors and directors of his day he also brought [00:21:20.22] [00:21:20.22] you it came from outer space and the creature from the Black Lagoon and [00:21:24.11] [00:21:24.11] then finally Richard Fleischer who did 2000 Leagues Under the sea and [00:21:27.14] [00:21:27.14] con and also then brought you eventually Fantastic Voyage so [00:21:30.22] [00:21:30.22] when these movies came out they were meant to be big deal movies so they received [00:21:35.18] [00:21:35.18] a lot of good forward press and they were very well received by the mainstream media [00:21:40.08] [00:21:40.08] New York the New York Times gave all of these movies good reviews and let me tell [00:21:43.11] [00:21:43.11] you the New York Times never give science fiction good reviews and [00:21:46.12] [00:21:46.12] even variety the trade magazine gave them good reviews the only places where [00:21:49.19] [00:21:49.19] they got bad reviews were in the science fiction magazines where they were seen as [00:21:53.01] [00:21:53.01] shoddy narratives full of plot holes so there you go but [00:21:57.05] [00:21:57.05] everyone else enjoys these and I think that it's worth talking about them. [00:22:00.08] [00:22:01.23] Ok so one thing you're going to see is like much like print science fiction you [00:22:05.14] [00:22:05.14] get mixed attitudes towards technologies that shrink people and [00:22:09.22] [00:22:09.22] in these movies you'll find that there's a certain sympathy for [00:22:12.19] [00:22:12.19] people who use shrinking technologies if they've been wronged or they're doing it [00:22:16.14] [00:22:16.14] either to clear their name or for the better so for the social good so [00:22:19.20] [00:22:19.20] the devil doll which is a crazy move and you get to see Lionel Barrymore in drag [00:22:23.23] [00:22:23.23] like it's very weird all right but here he's kind of a bad guy but [00:22:29.13] [00:22:29.13] he gets a pass because he's using these technologies to clear his name and [00:22:32.22] [00:22:32.22] prove to his daughter that he had been convicted wrongly [00:22:36.01] [00:22:36.01] of a crime he did not commit Dr Cyclops he's just a bad guy who shrinks things and [00:22:40.11] [00:22:40.11] bad things happen to him because of that and [00:22:43.11] [00:22:43.11] then finally incredible shrinking man's actually a great movie if you've never [00:22:46.06] [00:22:46.06] seen it it's considered like a really interesting excess dental film it's gets [00:22:51.09] [00:22:51.09] very philosophical for all that you have like a lot of sort of dramatic moments we [00:22:55.06] [00:22:55.06] have this guy fighting the cat and like living in his child's doll house but [00:22:58.16] [00:22:58.16] he spends a lot of time thinking about what this means to be shifting scale like [00:23:02.16] [00:23:02.16] this and what it means to live in a world where we can operate at different scales [00:23:06.02] [00:23:06.02] and I think that that's kind of interesting to think about. [00:23:08.04] [00:23:10.02] Finally of course we have fantastic voyage if you've never seen it this is a super [00:23:13.13] [00:23:13.13] fun one to watch lots of great special effects but the one thing that [00:23:18.16] [00:23:18.16] I don't love about Fantastic Voyage and that is sort of true of all these other [00:23:22.22] [00:23:22.22] movies is that ultimately and this often happens with Hollywood films even when [00:23:27.10] [00:23:27.10] they embrace some of the possibilities of small scale engineering there's a real [00:23:30.13] [00:23:30.13] distrust of scientists and in part I think this is coming out of World War true [00:23:34.15] [00:23:34.15] right right after Hiroshima Nagasaki and we're really sort of re sinking. [00:23:37.23] [00:23:39.12] How we treat science and technology and [00:23:41.19] [00:23:41.19] what you'll often see is that there's a shift away from the scientists to [00:23:44.12] [00:23:44.12] the action adventure hero as really being the person who's going to save the day [00:23:48.08] [00:23:48.08] here the scientist can maybe set up the problem and some of the solution but [00:23:51.12] [00:23:51.12] you need a Flash Gordon type character to go ahead and lead them [00:23:54.22] [00:23:54.22] through these worlds and that happens in all of these Grant Williams here has to [00:23:58.15] [00:23:58.15] become an action adventure hero to survive his own existential dilemma and [00:24:03.22] [00:24:03.22] these people all get killed so that doesn't matter as much but [00:24:07.04] [00:24:07.04] in the later movies it's sort of this is interesting thoughtfulness not just about [00:24:11.00] [00:24:11.00] what does it mean to live in this world the shifting scale but who are who [00:24:13.15] [00:24:13.15] are the leaders who are the people can lead us through these futures and [00:24:17.09] [00:24:17.09] it's an interesting and sometimes disturbing answer I think all right cool. [00:24:23.23] [00:24:23.23] Now we finally get to nanotechnology proper right with the rise [00:24:28.23] [00:24:28.23] of nanotechnology is a discipline as we know the term in a science nanotechnology [00:24:33.10] [00:24:33.10] it was coined in the 1974 right and then by the mid 1970 s. Drexel writing about [00:24:39.21] [00:24:39.21] in the creation the rise of the foresight Institute and through the eighty's and [00:24:43.04] [00:24:43.04] ninety's of course we're going to have the 1st nanotech science and [00:24:47.03] [00:24:47.03] technology centers the 1st scholarly journals the 1st conferences and [00:24:51.16] [00:24:51.16] the 1st science fiction that's properly about nano science a nano technology. [00:24:55.13] [00:24:57.04] All right so as this is happening as the just as the discipline is [00:25:00.15] [00:25:00.15] essentially professionalizing we're to see science fiction authors really tapping [00:25:04.17] [00:25:04.17] into that energy and I've done some some of the work I like I said I had done and [00:25:08.21] [00:25:08.21] stuff grant where we looked at nanoscience nanotechnology and [00:25:12.20] [00:25:12.20] in that period I interviewed a lot of authors who were publishing in this era [00:25:16.19] [00:25:16.19] and they were really it was interesting to find out where people were getting their [00:25:20.17] [00:25:20.17] information from a Turns out as you might not be surprised to learn a lot of authors [00:25:24.22] [00:25:24.22] were directly in contact with scientists like Eric Drexler and like Sims and [00:25:29.16] [00:25:29.16] Bainbridge from the national nanotechnology initiative so [00:25:33.16] [00:25:33.16] William Sims Bainbridge and [00:25:35.02] [00:25:35.02] Rocco I'm forgetting his last name right now but in touch what is it. [00:25:39.09] [00:25:40.15] Mike Rowe thank you. [00:25:41.13] [00:25:42.15] Not in my notes and of course I'm forgetting names right so [00:25:45.07] [00:25:45.07] anyways one thing it's been interesting I find is that so often and [00:25:48.05] [00:25:48.05] this is been true historically when authors wrote for instance a lot about [00:25:51.06] [00:25:51.06] atomic energy they would often talk with scientists and directly about this [00:25:56.04] [00:25:56.04] stuff and then the other places of course where people are getting their information [00:25:59.21] [00:25:59.21] nature nature things like that as you might expect so you so [00:26:04.14] [00:26:04.14] what's interesting is that even as I found out science fiction authors were really [00:26:07.13] [00:26:07.13] trying to study and get themselves up to speed on this what really got everyone [00:26:11.06] [00:26:11.06] excited were those big trucks Larry and ideas are the big sort of speculative [00:26:15.11] [00:26:15.11] ideas the same things that of course got Eric Drexler in trouble in the scientific [00:26:19.03] [00:26:19.03] community sometimes for dreaming too big and speculating too far works Aussie. [00:26:23.14] [00:26:23.14] In science fiction of course and Trexler himself admitted he was inspired [00:26:26.18] [00:26:26.18] by science fiction so there's perhaps no surprise so [00:26:29.21] [00:26:29.21] what you're going to see here in this arrow as we begin to actually talk about [00:26:33.23] [00:26:33.23] nanoscience in nanotechnology proper It could be either genetic mechanical or [00:26:38.17] [00:26:38.17] chemical in nature can be some mixture of those but what you're going to see is in [00:26:43.00] [00:26:43.00] each of these stories there's really a lot of excitement about the way that nano [00:26:47.01] [00:26:47.01] science of nanotechnology can engender widespread revolutionary change in science [00:26:52.07] [00:26:52.07] and society and so these stories tend to be very dramatic stories of revolution and [00:26:56.15] [00:26:56.15] radical human change a number of them are about how we [00:26:59.14] [00:26:59.14] while they're all about how we become post-human actually very much. [00:27:03.04] [00:27:04.06] Not the 1st one but the other 3 are and so really imagining and [00:27:07.11] [00:27:07.11] again this is something that if you look at their early literature that came out of [00:27:10.15] [00:27:10.15] the national nanotechnology initiative these are some of the early promises these [00:27:14.17] [00:27:14.17] these ideas that we really would indeed become more human of course there's no way [00:27:19.10] [00:27:19.10] anyone the government is going to say we're going to come post-human but [00:27:22.01] [00:27:22.01] we could become more fully human and [00:27:23.20] [00:27:23.20] at some level people were saying the exact same things when they said that Ok. [00:27:27.20] [00:27:29.04] Let's see what else we see so positive changes that you see in nanotech [00:27:32.10] [00:27:32.10] stories in this period again years it's really marked with the kinds of things [00:27:36.12] [00:27:36.12] that nano science has and the technologists are talking about [00:27:39.09] [00:27:39.09] improved physical performance and mental capacity improved creativity and [00:27:43.11] [00:27:43.11] the elimination of scarcity both at the individual and at the social level [00:27:47.05] [00:27:48.15] the negative consequences that are explored here are the passing of humanity [00:27:53.05] [00:27:53.05] and maybe that's not so much negative but a lot of these stories look at what does [00:27:56.11] [00:27:56.11] it mean to change our understanding of what it is to be human and [00:28:00.05] [00:28:00.05] what will we bring with us of the past and what will no longer make any sense so [00:28:03.11] [00:28:03.11] they become very thoughtful in that way they also worry about the creation of new [00:28:07.20] [00:28:07.20] social and economic hierarchies rather than the true elimination of want and [00:28:11.18] [00:28:11.18] the possibility of new weaponry especially in viral form. [00:28:14.23] [00:28:16.23] The other thing that you see in this era and this is really interesting that in [00:28:20.16] [00:28:20.16] a moment when nanotechnology is becoming its own professionalize discipline and [00:28:25.08] [00:28:25.08] when science fiction authors and artists know what's going on [00:28:29.20] [00:28:29.20] they nonetheless choose often to represent nanotechnology as having agency and [00:28:34.08] [00:28:34.08] this is very common in this era of science fiction that nano things come alive and [00:28:39.06] [00:28:39.06] they're often much more lively than we ourselves are in fact [00:28:42.21] [00:28:42.21] they have consciousness and purpose and again often more so than humans. [00:28:46.01] [00:28:47.01] And I was looking at and [00:28:48.02] [00:28:48.02] is trying to think about why that would be that in a moment of real both literary and [00:28:51.18] [00:28:51.18] scientific sophistication Why go back to this sort of older form and I was thinking [00:28:55.22] [00:28:55.22] about that's exactly it often when someone authors are trying to present and authors [00:29:00.15] [00:29:00.15] do this in all disciplines you think about it when you do your own writing [00:29:03.05] [00:29:03.05] when we're trying to present new ideas to people we use metaphors and [00:29:06.10] [00:29:06.10] we use references to the past to help frame and make sense of things so [00:29:09.18] [00:29:09.18] I think what happened was that authors were beginning to explore the implications [00:29:13.04] [00:29:13.04] of the technology that did indeed seem like it could very easily escape human [00:29:17.05] [00:29:17.05] control become something else that they went back to one of the oldest story types [00:29:20.21] [00:29:20.21] we have in science fiction and that's the rampaging robot and so what happens is [00:29:25.08] [00:29:25.08] suddenly all those gray Goosen areas the Grey Goo has consciousness and that's [00:29:29.11] [00:29:29.11] because in some ways it's easier and it's familiar to us we know what a rampaging [00:29:32.17] [00:29:32.17] robot story looks like and we know how to tell that story and that is indeed [00:29:37.08] [00:29:37.08] partially the stories that we get in here but what happens is that every one of [00:29:41.03] [00:29:41.03] these stories humans encounter some sort of nano being that doesn't [00:29:45.06] [00:29:45.06] seem to act like a rampaging robot usually because it kills a bunch of humans or [00:29:49.16] [00:29:49.16] takes them apart and turns them into goo or into something else and what we have [00:29:54.04] [00:29:54.04] mentioned we learn though is because our our heroes are plucky and persistent and [00:29:57.20] [00:29:57.20] they keep trying to make contact with the alien other and see another [00:30:01.01] [00:30:01.01] old story form comes into play contact with the alien other Eventually we learn [00:30:05.06] [00:30:05.06] the now the Nano beings didn't really mean it totally a mistake on their part [00:30:09.09] [00:30:09.09] it's just a matter of 2 very different sets of species consciousness how that [00:30:12.19] [00:30:12.19] happened interact with one another this makes. [00:30:15.10] [00:30:15.10] It's storytelling whether or not it bears much resemblance to what's going to happen [00:30:19.05] [00:30:19.05] in the real world who knows but these are really fun stories and it's a it's a nice [00:30:23.00] [00:30:23.00] way to be able to dramatize and articulate some of our hopes and fears about these [00:30:27.03] [00:30:27.03] new sciences and technologies so if you've never read Has anyone ever you read [00:30:32.03] [00:30:32.03] Stanislaw Lem don't even know the movie or the books alarmists there's been so [00:30:36.02] [00:30:36.02] many versions of it right so this is the Invincibles a lot like Solarz for [00:30:41.15] [00:30:41.15] those of you who know it Lem often writes about humans running into aliens with whom [00:30:46.03] [00:30:46.03] they cannot communicate and cannot figure out what's going on and [00:30:49.04] [00:30:49.04] that's exactly what happens here humans go to a different planet and encounter what's [00:30:53.21] [00:30:53.21] essentially a nano swarm which kills a bunch of their crew and then eventually [00:30:58.23] [00:30:58.23] it stops and they realize it didn't mean it but they can't communicate with it and [00:31:02.05] [00:31:02.05] they never figure out what's going on and then they just go away and [00:31:05.15] [00:31:05.15] that's the end of the story if that feels unsatisfying to you which. [00:31:08.04] [00:31:09.05] It's meant to be but you know a lot of life is on satisfying like that right [00:31:13.01] [00:31:13.01] if you're looking for satisfying narrative I'd actually recommend one of the more [00:31:16.06] [00:31:16.06] these later books from the eighty's the ninety's we're going to get a more [00:31:19.01] [00:31:19.01] pleasingly rounded narrative and where the Nano beings talk back to us whether or [00:31:23.00] [00:31:23.00] not you want to like what they say that's another thing so in both blood music and [00:31:27.20] [00:31:27.20] woman these Bloom you really do have nano beings [00:31:31.02] [00:31:31.02] forms that come to a sort of collective consciousness and have to engage with us. [00:31:34.10] [00:31:35.10] And figure out what they're going to do unfortunately in both blood music and [00:31:39.10] [00:31:39.10] bloom by the time we've figured out how to talk to the the assembler's they've [00:31:42.11] [00:31:42.11] already taken apart the earth than half of humanity and [00:31:45.08] [00:31:45.08] turn them into other things that we're not getting back but [00:31:48.07] [00:31:48.07] on the plus side everyone's consciousness gets downloaded so it's Ok because even if [00:31:52.06] [00:31:52.06] grandma got eaten in the great American transformation you can go talk to her in [00:31:56.13] [00:31:56.13] these sort of weird simulated cyberspace is that they make it's wild inventive and [00:32:01.05] [00:32:01.05] it has its poison bearing on reality super fun Kathleen and [00:32:06.00] [00:32:06.00] Queen City jazz follows a similar models a little bit different [00:32:08.23] [00:32:08.23] I call attention to it because goon is considered the queen of nano punk and [00:32:12.21] [00:32:12.21] because she's also a former faculty member. [00:32:15.22] [00:32:15.22] Here at Georgia Tech and is still on the advisory board for sea and so [00:32:19.23] [00:32:19.23] here it's not so much that we make contact with nano beings that have gone out of [00:32:24.06] [00:32:24.06] control is that the Nano beings bilbies don't ask why they build these they just [00:32:28.15] [00:32:28.15] build these you got to run with it to move to run things in the future but [00:32:32.06] [00:32:32.06] the bees go wrong and they get addicted to human story and [00:32:35.14] [00:32:35.14] all they want to do is turn people into characters from their favorite stories and [00:32:39.01] [00:32:39.01] so we live in a world where everyone has become Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway and [00:32:42.06] [00:32:42.06] you can't play a decent baseball game because Ernest Hemingway is not a team [00:32:45.01] [00:32:45.01] player so a little bit different a little weird but [00:32:48.14] [00:32:48.14] again you have the same basic principle where human sort of have to think through [00:32:51.21] [00:32:51.21] what does that mean with the passing of humanity and [00:32:53.22] [00:32:53.22] eventually talk to the beings that may or may not come after them. [00:32:56.19] [00:32:58.09] All right and of course nanotech is on both the big In the small screen at this [00:33:02.19] [00:33:02.19] point as well interestingly Hollywood comes to the nanotech game really late [00:33:07.21] [00:33:07.21] you don't see a lot of movies employing nanoscience of nanotechnology until the 2 [00:33:12.04] [00:33:12.04] thousands but there was one exception and that was the Terminator franchise which [00:33:17.06] [00:33:17.06] started out exploring this in Terminator 2 and then continues to look at and [00:33:22.03] [00:33:22.03] continues to use nanoscience and nano technology through the series and [00:33:27.01] [00:33:27.01] see if I have anything exciting to say about that here. [00:33:29.03] [00:33:34.19] Just that you've seen the Terminator movies right literally you get [00:33:37.10] [00:33:37.10] the rampaging robot scenario here right and it sort of all comes together very [00:33:41.20] [00:33:41.20] beautifully right and I think that because of movies like Terminator [00:33:48.10] [00:33:48.10] it's little wonder that scientists hate nano films right between this and [00:33:52.07] [00:33:52.07] Michael Crighton spray I've often found in the sort of 2 biggest hurdles we have [00:33:55.14] [00:33:55.14] to get over we will deal with very very quickly in a moment here [00:34:00.01] [00:34:00.01] what's interesting is you actually see a lot more exploration of nano science and [00:34:03.13] [00:34:03.13] nanotechnology early on in television and I think there's a couple reasons for [00:34:07.03] [00:34:07.03] this one is that there are more words in a television show than there are in a film [00:34:11.23] [00:34:11.23] yet films have. [00:34:14.02] [00:34:14.02] One 3rd of the words that a novel has they have to convey their information in other [00:34:17.18] [00:34:17.18] ways t.v. shows also use fewer words clearly than a print novel but t.v. [00:34:22.08] [00:34:22.08] shows generally do rely more on talking because there's not as much money for [00:34:25.09] [00:34:25.09] special effects and they tend to be serial so [00:34:28.02] [00:34:28.02] there's time to you have you can explore things over time and do a more deep dive [00:34:31.17] [00:34:31.17] and so I think that's one of the reasons you see nanoscience a nano technology on [00:34:34.16] [00:34:34.16] the small screen there was more time to sort of work out its implications and [00:34:38.10] [00:34:38.10] weave it into already existing plots so [00:34:40.19] [00:34:40.19] in some cases it's a one off like in Star Trek The Next Generation episode evolution [00:34:45.16] [00:34:45.16] where Wesley Crusher creates man ites and then accidentally lets them evolve and [00:34:50.05] [00:34:50.05] then a mad scientist tries to kill them and then they fight back and we're right [00:34:53.21] [00:34:53.21] back in the rampaging robot scenario but it's Star Trek so we make contact and [00:34:57.13] [00:34:57.13] we communicate and it all works out and it's groovy right of course what's cool [00:35:01.10] [00:35:01.10] is the Nano I have to talk through data they can't talk in any other way and so [00:35:05.11] [00:35:05.11] they have to plug into the most machine like of the humans there so [00:35:08.20] [00:35:08.20] that that's why they're all gathered around him there for those who don't you [00:35:12.12] [00:35:12.12] want I don't know if you watch Red Dwarf it's a marvelous British comedy it's so [00:35:16.03] [00:35:16.03] funny it's a it's a great space comedy and I think it was the leap from [00:35:20.18] [00:35:20.18] seasons 7 to 8 the turn from 7 to 8 they had done a multiple series [00:35:25.07] [00:35:25.07] multiple episodes series called prelude to an hour to name an arche right and [00:35:29.12] [00:35:29.12] once again of course we have now nights they're conscious [00:35:32.16] [00:35:32.16] they seem to be rampaging but in the end they do some good things they end up [00:35:35.23] [00:35:35.23] healing one of the characters who's lost an arm and [00:35:39.02] [00:35:39.02] they they've lost a lot of the ship at this point and eventually once they make [00:35:42.22] [00:35:42.22] contact with the with the nanobots the nanobots rebuild their ship for [00:35:46.02] [00:35:46.02] them as well so in this case really I would say it's just a plot device [00:35:50.02] [00:35:50.02] right I mean this is a way to reboot the plot really quickly and [00:35:52.13] [00:35:52.13] get the show going again although one that works and makes sense and [00:35:56.06] [00:35:56.06] then finally my favorite is Mystery Science Theater 3000 there were multiple [00:35:59.17] [00:35:59.17] episodes while they were on the side 5 channel that brought you the Nano and [00:36:04.05] [00:36:04.05] if you don't know if you remember that was Joe Shelley Carl Earle and [00:36:08.06] [00:36:08.06] there were a number of different man ites and in every episode there was worry of [00:36:11.12] [00:36:11.12] course that the knights were going to sort of get the. [00:36:13.15] [00:36:13.15] Selves together and start reassembling the ship in their own image Fortunately for [00:36:18.22] [00:36:18.22] everyone on the ship of love the man I have as many problems as humans do and [00:36:23.17] [00:36:23.17] in every episode they totally get lost in their own social problems so [00:36:26.23] [00:36:26.23] this episode they wanted to unionize right so they can't actually disassemble [00:36:31.00] [00:36:31.00] the ship because they're on strike later there's going to be some of the girl [00:36:35.10] [00:36:35.10] Knights are going to come to a sort of feminist sensibility and region and demand [00:36:38.11] [00:36:38.11] a real division of labor so these kinds of things will sort of keep happening so [00:36:42.06] [00:36:42.06] here again it seems to be more a metaphor for other things and just a fun thing to [00:36:45.22] [00:36:45.22] play with than it more than anything else but again it's nice to see positive images [00:36:50.22] [00:36:50.22] of small scale worlds and the kinds of things that might inhabit them. [00:36:54.15] [00:36:55.16] Ok cool we're doing great on time here almost done 2000 to the present So [00:37:01.09] [00:37:01.09] this is also we could say the era when nanotech actually gets kind of [00:37:04.09] [00:37:04.09] boring in science fiction as nanoscience and [00:37:07.07] [00:37:07.07] then a technology becomes right a thoroughly established discipline and [00:37:11.11] [00:37:11.11] some of the early products that have been promised to us have come into [00:37:16.14] [00:37:16.14] the culture and as people have more experience with nano science and [00:37:20.19] [00:37:20.19] nanotechnology we tend to talk about this about it in a lot more prosaic ways and [00:37:25.11] [00:37:25.11] the one thing you really 7 seen since 2000 to the present is that now tech now is one [00:37:30.04] [00:37:30.04] tool amongst many within science fiction stories for building new futures and [00:37:33.20] [00:37:33.20] in some ways this might be bringing it back maybe [00:37:36.17] [00:37:36.17] in some ways to something more like what's actually going on in nano science and [00:37:40.22] [00:37:40.22] nanotechnology unless you all are creating Union unionised nights that I [00:37:45.18] [00:37:45.18] don't know about please tell me you are please tell me all right maybe or [00:37:49.20] [00:37:49.20] not that's Ok but what you do see is what's interesting to me is that Ok I had [00:37:54.19] [00:37:54.19] to include Michael Crighton here for the most part most people who put together [00:37:57.16] [00:37:57.16] histories of nanoscience and nanotechnology will not include him [00:38:00.11] [00:38:00.11] because they hate this book so very very much for those of you who do or [00:38:04.09] [00:38:04.09] don't know it's a really it I mean this is really what got everyone in the world [00:38:07.19] [00:38:07.19] freaked out about the grey goo scenario back in the early 2000 including I think [00:38:11.19] [00:38:11.19] Prince Charles like got all really upset about it read the book got very concerned [00:38:16.18] [00:38:16.18] Good thing we have the royals there for that for to tell us these things but [00:38:21.12] [00:38:21.12] there's a lot of people really feel that it's a ridiculous book and [00:38:24.14] [00:38:24.14] it is true if you've ever read it and if you haven't it's exciting [00:38:28.01] [00:38:28.01] I mean credits a great writer I don't want to bash on that or anything but [00:38:31.11] [00:38:31.11] once you start to think about the plot it just really no bueno so but [00:38:36.04] [00:38:36.04] I wanted to mention it here it's also interesting because it's such [00:38:38.21] [00:38:38.21] an anomaly that in an era when everyone else is starting think about nano science [00:38:41.23] [00:38:41.23] of nanotechnology is tools he takes us back to the rampaging robot scenario [00:38:46.07] [00:38:46.07] which other authors and filmmakers had were done with by that point and yet [00:38:50.09] [00:38:50.09] it's interesting because it got so [00:38:51.17] [00:38:51.17] much cultural attention it's clearly still a concern for many people. [00:38:55.06] [00:38:55.06] And it made him a bunch of money. [00:38:56.05] [00:38:57.11] What's been more interesting what you're more likely to see in science fiction [00:39:00.06] [00:39:00.06] these are 3 very very different books from authors from around the globe but [00:39:05.01] [00:39:05.01] even though they're very different kinds of books this is a post singularity story [00:39:08.13] [00:39:08.13] about how we in computational lobsters all become post-human and [00:39:12.10] [00:39:12.10] inhabit all kinds of large and micro scale galaxies but Zircher is [00:39:17.19] [00:39:17.19] a dystopian zombie novel essentially where people are using nano weapons [00:39:23.06] [00:39:23.06] viral nano weapons to to build utopia the war the war that breaks out in the world [00:39:28.12] [00:39:28.12] is people have different ideas about how they're going to build utopia and [00:39:31.01] [00:39:31.01] they're going to use nanotechnology to do it so they're releasing different kinds of [00:39:34.17] [00:39:34.17] viruses one of which wipes out all of human free well so. [00:39:38.06] [00:39:39.13] And then here in the 3 body problem some of you might know this by major [00:39:44.02] [00:39:44.02] Chinese and now global science fiction author This is an alien invasion story and [00:39:48.22] [00:39:48.22] nanotechnology is one of the tools amongst many that the aliens use in their attempt [00:39:53.11] [00:39:53.11] to take over Earth they actually go past nanotechnology to Pico technology and [00:39:58.06] [00:39:58.06] they use that to do a very literal rule gnarly quantum entanglement that holds our [00:40:02.15] [00:40:02.15] ability to use our particle accelerators and to do advance science any further So [00:40:07.15] [00:40:07.15] that's kind of cool too and Leo is actually an engineer so [00:40:11.10] [00:40:11.10] I think he's bringing some of that with him to this. [00:40:13.20] [00:40:15.22] So again what's interesting is with the exception of Crighton all of these artists [00:40:18.22] [00:40:18.22] imagine nano science and technology as one tool amongst many that changes [00:40:23.14] [00:40:23.14] the world while it's an important tool and all these stories are by no [00:40:26.20] [00:40:26.20] means the only tools there are lots of other things that are going on as well. [00:40:30.03] [00:40:33.01] What becomes And also interesting is that again in these stories with the exception [00:40:36.22] [00:40:36.22] of Crighton how much nanotechnology has become a way to think metaphorically [00:40:42.15] [00:40:42.15] about the human condition and in fact this is something I know that Kathy Boudin has [00:40:45.20] [00:40:45.20] talked about and that scientists have quoted her on is how much nanotechnology [00:40:49.04] [00:40:49.04] can be used to talk about the transmission of ideas and language and thought that it [00:40:52.09] [00:40:52.09] becomes a sort of nice way to map that kind of linguistic engineering as well. [00:40:57.12] [00:40:58.22] And then last but not least one thing that we've seen in the last couple decades is [00:41:02.06] [00:41:02.06] that the idea of nanotechnology is a useful tool not just in the worlds [00:41:06.12] [00:41:06.12] we build but in narrative storytelling has exploded across media so [00:41:10.15] [00:41:10.15] I wanted to give you 5 very different places you might go on your own [00:41:14.05] [00:41:14.05] to look at what the I think the present and future of [00:41:17.16] [00:41:17.16] speculative storytelling about nano science and nanotechnology is the big one [00:41:21.15] [00:41:21.15] is in video games there's lots of video games that incorporate nanotechnology but [00:41:24.19] [00:41:24.19] the one people get most excited about is Metal Gear which has been going since 1907 [00:41:29.05] [00:41:29.05] has been again like the Terminator series using nanotechnology within its gameplay [00:41:33.22] [00:41:33.22] structure since the early 1990 s. And in fact this is an image from. [00:41:39.06] [00:41:40.06] The 22013 game I can't member what it's called but [00:41:43.14] [00:41:43.14] you're beat you're fighting the big boss at the end of these ads you can't beat [00:41:46.07] [00:41:46.07] them that's the sort of catch of the game is the boss cannot be beat and [00:41:49.08] [00:41:49.08] at one point your character is like why can't I kill you and [00:41:52.04] [00:41:52.04] of course he says now no machines on the answer is always nano machines and [00:41:55.11] [00:41:55.11] as you may know that's become a meme that's all around culture right now so [00:41:59.13] [00:41:59.13] you can go get that you can get him dancing sometimes when he talks about this [00:42:03.12] [00:42:03.12] it's a lot of fun the Marvel Comics universe has long played [00:42:07.09] [00:42:07.09] with things like this especially in terms of Iron Man whose suit is in its [00:42:12.04] [00:42:12.04] current iteration is literally described as liquid metal and nano assemblers but [00:42:17.02] [00:42:17.02] even if you go all the way back to the early 1960 s. comics [00:42:21.06] [00:42:21.06] they talk about how the suit is built out of tiny transmitters and I think even that [00:42:24.08] [00:42:24.08] early they're trying to grope toward some sort of miniaturized engineering idea. [00:42:28.20] [00:42:30.04] My favorite is that we've been seeing nanotechnology in music at the very [00:42:34.01] [00:42:34.01] beginning of this talk I had put up a video for They Might Be Giants nanobots [00:42:38.14] [00:42:38.14] which you can go listen to it on line but if you're not of They Might Be Giants fan [00:42:42.17] [00:42:42.17] you prefer your music a little bit bouncier you might go check out the nano [00:42:45.20] [00:42:45.20] technology rap which is the only hip hop song in existence about nanotechnology. [00:42:49.09] [00:42:51.13] And it's pretty great. [00:42:52.15] [00:42:53.16] New technology plays a big part in a lot of board games but [00:42:57.18] [00:42:57.18] the place where it's been especially important has been in the Mike John Smith [00:43:01.05] [00:43:01.05] cyberpunk series beginning with. [00:43:05.07] [00:43:05.07] Probably 2020 I think and then all the way through the present that your [00:43:10.03] [00:43:10.03] ability to use as you use it's really cool in this game but to use nanoscience and [00:43:14.12] [00:43:14.12] nano technology to alter yourself it radically changes the gameplay because you [00:43:17.20] [00:43:17.20] begin to lose humanity points and that changes your effectiveness at interacting [00:43:21.11] [00:43:21.11] with the world so one thing it explores here is how what are the sort of optimal [00:43:25.23] [00:43:25.23] ways in which we might use nanoscience nano technology to alter ourselves and [00:43:30.08] [00:43:30.08] where where is the trade off start that it becomes dangerous and then finally for [00:43:34.07] [00:43:34.07] those of you just can't get enough of nano fiction I invite you to go to Wattpad [00:43:38.06] [00:43:38.06] which is the world's largest online storytelling community and what happens is [00:43:42.01] [00:43:42.01] groups of people will get together there in clusters and start to publish books so [00:43:45.20] [00:43:45.20] they put all their stories together in online books you can download and [00:43:48.23] [00:43:48.23] there are thousands of new nano tech stories on this website all put together [00:43:53.08] [00:43:53.08] into nano bytes which was just updated January December 29th and they updated [00:43:58.09] [00:43:58.09] every month I think every 2 months so that's pretty cool all right I did it [00:44:03.08] [00:44:03.08] I have gotten you to the present took maybe more like 40 minutes but [00:44:07.01] [00:44:07.01] that's Ok we had a lot to cover so just in conclusion I want if you're interested [00:44:10.15] [00:44:10.15] in the subject here's some further reading you might do if you want to talk to [00:44:13.13] [00:44:13.13] me at all here are some places you can find me. [00:44:15.08] [00:44:16.13] I just want to conclude really quickly with a few moments about why we might [00:44:20.07] [00:44:20.07] actually think about this why so I've talked about this and hopefully [00:44:23.17] [00:44:23.17] entertained you why you've digested but hopefully also given you like food for [00:44:26.20] [00:44:26.20] thought as well and think about why we might care about any of this or why [00:44:30.12] [00:44:30.12] you want to think about representations of science and technology and science fiction [00:44:34.19] [00:44:34.19] I think it's really important to do this obviously I've spent my entire career [00:44:37.21] [00:44:37.21] doing this and I mean it when I do it I mean it's not just to get tenure and [00:44:41.01] [00:44:41.01] not just because I like to read science fiction hall that's pretty cool but [00:44:44.22] [00:44:44.22] really I mean I think you know one of the things we see is that [00:44:47.11] [00:44:47.11] the media are we live in a media saturated world and the mainstream media loves [00:44:51.10] [00:44:51.10] simple utopian dystopian narratives of science and society and it really wants [00:44:56.09] [00:44:56.09] to go in one direction or another and this can be a challenge for scientists. [00:45:00.06] [00:45:01.08] As they're thinking about avenues of research and of course more practically. [00:45:04.23] [00:45:04.23] As you're arguing for grant money and for things like this as well right. [00:45:09.02] [00:45:10.13] So one of the reasons I think it's important to think about this is that [00:45:13.23] [00:45:13.23] science fiction is a big tent and while you can indeed find those simple utopian [00:45:17.19] [00:45:17.19] dystopian narratives as I hope I've shown you today there are lots of authors and [00:45:22.02] [00:45:22.02] directors and game designers and other artists out there who are trying to think [00:45:26.04] [00:45:26.04] through issues of national science and nanotechnology in society in seriously [00:45:29.23] [00:45:29.23] nuanced ways right and when we study this there are 3 different things we can do it [00:45:35.12] [00:45:35.12] and I just want to leave you here with my last trouble triple one of the things that [00:45:38.20] [00:45:38.20] happens when we look at science through the lens of science fiction is we actually [00:45:42.00] [00:45:42.00] get a much better understanding of how the world at large sees science write science [00:45:45.18] [00:45:45.18] fiction is generally right and we like to pretend it's written by scientists and [00:45:48.13] [00:45:48.13] engineers and sometimes that is and that's really cool but it's often written [00:45:51.23] [00:45:51.23] by people who feel that there are more the objects of scientific inquiry and [00:45:56.12] [00:45:56.12] the targets of technological manipulation rather than in control of it and [00:46:00.05] [00:46:00.05] this is a venue for people to talk back to scientists and [00:46:03.15] [00:46:03.15] engineers and it's a good way to figure out what people think about what you do. [00:46:07.02] [00:46:08.02] Also provides you with images you can use back and [00:46:11.00] [00:46:11.00] this is something that we talked about a lot when we did the n.s.f. [00:46:14.13] [00:46:14.13] Grant was how you could use these stories as educational tools that have been part [00:46:18.16] [00:46:18.16] of the thrust of that grant was to think about how to develop an educational [00:46:21.21] [00:46:21.21] program to combat those abroad in very simple narratives of nanotechnology [00:46:27.06] [00:46:27.06] another thing you get when you're using science fiction in this way is a virtual [00:46:30.01] [00:46:30.01] laboratory experiment thing with New Directions for science and [00:46:34.00] [00:46:34.00] this is something that scientists have done since the beginning of science [00:46:37.10] [00:46:37.10] fiction most of you probably know that Leo says lard talked a lot about [00:46:42.04] [00:46:42.04] how thinking through h.g. Wells' stories about nuclear war were actually what was [00:46:46.23] [00:46:46.23] what allowed him to solve some of the key issues in developing the atomic bomb and [00:46:50.23] [00:46:50.23] also to realize what a dangerous weapon he had on his hand today we have people like [00:46:55.12] [00:46:55.12] the Sigma group which is a group of scientists and authors that includes [00:46:58.09] [00:46:58.09] Kathy Goonan who do who do consulting for the government for nonprofit corporations. [00:47:04.23] [00:47:04.23] On exactly these topics and Kathy Boudin goes in actual sit down with [00:47:08.04] [00:47:08.04] the Pentagon and spin a little science fiction stories for them and [00:47:11.05] [00:47:11.05] then some people some of the generals will like throw down their pens and [00:47:14.02] [00:47:14.02] go stomping out because it's like this is the silliest thing ever and [00:47:17.00] [00:47:17.00] others are like this is cool when do you think we could develop nanotech [00:47:20.15] [00:47:20.15] educational Pods You know so it becomes a way to think beyond where your Narcisse [00:47:25.01] [00:47:25.01] are only allowed to think maybe in a more traditional laboratory and [00:47:28.19] [00:47:28.19] then finally this isn't anything to do with nanotechnology but it's such a great [00:47:31.20] [00:47:31.20] example I really believe that looking at issues of science and science [00:47:35.03] [00:47:35.03] fiction could give scientists themselves new ways of doing science in the world and [00:47:39.01] [00:47:39.01] the example I would end with is a student who recently graduated out of my out of [00:47:42.13] [00:47:42.13] Georgia Tech and out of my science fiction lab she was a bio mechanical engineer and [00:47:47.18] [00:47:47.18] her last day of class we went out to the sets I've decided what I want to do with [00:47:50.10] [00:47:50.10] my life I'm going to go into reproductive technology design and [00:47:53.18] [00:47:53.18] I'm like that's really cool I think [00:47:55.06] [00:47:55.06] that's a great idea what led you there because I had no idea she was headed in [00:47:58.03] [00:47:58.03] this direction and she looked at me and she said [00:48:00.12] [00:48:00.12] Dude after 2 years of like reading stories about how no one's going to do it for [00:48:05.03] [00:48:05.03] the sisters if we don't do it for ourselves I know I have to get in there [00:48:07.18] [00:48:07.18] and lead the way on redesigning these technologies and that's exciting to me [00:48:11.11] [00:48:11.11] this matters it matters to our students even if it doesn't matter to ourselves and [00:48:15.01] [00:48:15.01] so I would leave you with that if nothing else that [00:48:16.23] [00:48:16.23] really can make a change in the world thank you thank. [00:48:20.04] [00:48:24.10] You. [00:48:24.22] [00:48:30.12] Carol. [00:48:31.00] [00:48:37.23] Yeah absolutely right. [00:48:39.17] [00:48:42.01] And he's writing that in that's the fifty's right so [00:48:44.07] [00:48:44.07] right when were those stories of scale the great stories of scale are coming out in [00:48:47.17] [00:48:47.17] science fiction and in popular culture up told to make sense [00:48:50.15] [00:48:50.15] i love it I had left off children's literature Thank you that's quite. [00:48:53.14] [00:48:59.06] Right so in terms of getting like some of the books and movies I've talked about [00:49:04.04] [00:49:04.04] anything before 927 it's free game and it's online so you'll find it for sure. [00:49:09.04] [00:49:09.04] Just Google it yeah yeah even a lot of the later stuff that's like the movies that [00:49:13.11] [00:49:13.11] I've talked about most of them you should be able to rent from any major place or [00:49:17.02] [00:49:17.02] if you have crafty clever students who know how to think find things on line [00:49:20.09] [00:49:20.09] they can probably get that for you as well and then most of the stories like I said [00:49:25.15] [00:49:25.15] a lot of those stories will be online as well everything before 927 will be on [00:49:29.17] [00:49:29.17] Project Gutenberg and then later stories they often get riposte it online [00:49:35.03] [00:49:35.03] this is how just Google it I mean that's your best bet and if you still can't find [00:49:38.02] [00:49:38.02] it hit me up I've got all of these and I'm happy to share them with you. [00:49:40.16] [00:49:54.11] That's a great question. [00:49:55.08] [00:50:01.01] Yes and no very terrible answer there and yeah there is a line and [00:50:04.23] [00:50:04.23] we talk about the I mean there are some differences between fantasy and science [00:50:07.20] [00:50:07.20] fiction they do some things the same right they're both a realist to genres but [00:50:10.23] [00:50:10.23] one is about a world that could happen right given what we currently know to be [00:50:14.20] [00:50:14.20] true about science and society that's the science fiction one right fantasies about [00:50:18.09] [00:50:18.09] worlds that could never happen given what we currently know to be true [00:50:21.11] [00:50:21.11] about science and society so there is that difference but there's a lot of blurring [00:50:24.21] [00:50:24.21] in there obviously and especially when you're talking about emergent sciences and [00:50:28.06] [00:50:28.06] technologies you'll often find that people move more to the fantasy genre to talk [00:50:32.09] [00:50:32.09] about them because you can use magic as a placeholder for a science you don't [00:50:35.22] [00:50:35.22] understand and the other thing we're seeing is there was a lot of blending [00:50:40.13] [00:50:40.13] of the genres back at the beginning in the 18 hundreds and early 1800 and [00:50:44.09] [00:50:44.09] now as science fiction goes global and as people are bringing in traditions from all [00:50:47.11] [00:50:47.11] over the world there's a lot more fantasy being brought in as people bring in [00:50:51.08] [00:50:51.08] their own speculative traditions so yeah you can play the game with the line and [00:50:55.20] [00:50:55.20] we do and we spend about a day doing that in one of my classes and [00:50:58.15] [00:50:58.15] it's a lot of fun but you can also drive yourself crazy doing that and you can just [00:51:02.05] [00:51:02.05] save big tent it's all speculative and then try to look at what produces the most [00:51:06.09] [00:51:06.09] interesting conversations that's that's sort of what I try to go. [00:51:08.21] [00:51:13.07] Pretty well. [00:51:13.21] [00:51:16.23] Because. [00:51:17.11] [00:51:19.11] There's no. [00:51:20.20] [00:51:20.20] 00. [00:51:22.00] [00:51:23.04] 000 That's a great one I hadn't even thought about putting that in there but [00:51:26.10] [00:51:26.10] that makes sense yeah yeah there are a number of stories I did not get to talk [00:51:30.17] [00:51:30.17] about in here as well including There's an early Arthur c. [00:51:33.13] [00:51:33.13] Clarke story from the fifty's that really kind of describes nano Assemblers [00:51:37.14] [00:51:37.14] in very precise terminology not surprising he. [00:51:40.15] [00:51:41.17] Clark got a lot of things he got communication technologies too and [00:51:44.14] [00:51:44.14] space elevators so not that we really have them yet but we think about them still. [00:51:49.02] [00:51:54.17] Thank you. [00:51:55.05]