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"One could imagine a very ascetic sort of life ... where the body is ignored. This is something I've played with in my books, where people hate to be reminded sometimes that they have bodies, they find it very slow and tedious."
- William Gibson
 |
| Dumb Matter | ||
| Ordinary matter, with no nano-value added. |
See the opposite of this term - computronium.
| "Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn't even a biosphere there. They should be working on uploading and solving the nanoassembly conformational problem instead. Then we could turn all the available dumb matter into computronium and use it for processing our thoughts..." |
| Technovelgy from Accelerando,
by Charles Stross. Published by Ace in 2005 Additional resources -
|
"Dumb matter" is one of those wonderful sf terms like ground car, inert-wear or static home. In each case, an sfnal idea is introduced, along with a related term for something commonplace you already know.
Check out the opposite of dumb matter - computronium.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Accelerando
More Ideas
and Technology by Charles Stross
Tech news articles related to Accelerando
Tech news articles related to works by Charles Stross
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| FlexRAM Liquid Metal RAM And One Particular SF Movie Robot |
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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
