Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
 |
| Ideator | ||
| A computer device specifically made to help model genes and proteins for identification. |
In this novel, Bear describes the future of the children created in Darwin's Radio. There is a lot of future thinking about the study of microbiology; it comes up as the protagonists try to study an illness that affects these children.
| Everything on and around the benches was hooked up to a small, square, bright red Cenomics Ideator, a dedicated computer capable of 3-D imaging and real-time gene and protein description and identification. There was more than a wealth of equipment here: what Dicken saw as he walked around the room amounted to obscene overkill for a typical school medical facility. He had visited labs in rich biotech firms that wouldn't have been able to compete. "Wow," Dicken said in awe... he walked between the benches, then paused to reach out with his gloved hand and stroke the Ideator. He had his riverboat. He had everything he needed to track the virus back up the river of disease to the far, frozen north - to its sleeping, glacial form. |
| Technovelgy from Darwin's Children,
by Greg Bear. Published by Del Rey in 2003 Additional resources -
|
In looking around for anything else on this item, I did find what appears to be a (failed) computer-aided design product called an Ideator.
I found a very cool tool called ProtoShop (nicely backformed on Photoshop, the image manipulation tool). Here's what it does:
Our work focuses on providing an interactive, visual tool - dubbed ProtoShop - to rapidly create many initial configurations for a given amino acid sequence, which are then submitted to an optimization algorithm...
One of the grand challenges in computational biology is the prediction of the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its chemical makeup alone. A protein's primary structure, i.e., its amino acid sequence, is directly encoded in its DNA sequence; this, however, is a purely one-dimensional structure that does not directly encode a three-dimensional shape...
Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Darwin's Children
More Ideas
and Technology by Greg Bear
Tech news articles related to Darwin's Children
Tech news articles related to works by Greg Bear
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
| Let's Make Slaver Sunflowers! Engineering Plants To Reflect Light |
| Machete-Wielding Philodendron Isn't Going To Take It Anymore |
| Tsunami Forecasts Improved By Ionosphere Signals |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
