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"I don't have an e-mail address. As much as I admire the Internet I suffer literally agoraphobia, which in it's original sense means a fear of the marketplace. I do not want to receive three hundred e-mail messages per week from strangers…"
- William Gibson
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| Matter Compiler | ||
| A device that builds the desired article (such as a dress) atom by atom according to a specified design. |
The ideal of being able to construct materials molecule by molecule is now being tested with very small nanomachines. However, it is only a matter of time before larger articles are made available.
One example that has a history in science fiction is the idea that customized clothing, like dresses, blouses and ribbons, could be created in an absolutely customized manner.
| Whenever Nell's clothes got too small for her, Harv would pitch them into the deke bin and then have the M.C. make new ones. Sometimes, if Tequila was going to take Nell someplace where they would see other moms with other daughters, she'd use the M.C. to make Nell a special dress with lace and ribbons. |
| From The Diamond Age,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam Books in 1995 Additional resources -
|
Tired of shopping for clothes, and trying to find something that fits you? You might want to take a look at the entry for customized clothing from Methuselah's Children by Robert Heinlein some fifty years earlier.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Diamond Age
More Ideas
and Technology by Neal Stephenson
Tech news articles related to The Diamond Age
Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson
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news articles:
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| Boring Company Bricks Predicted In 1929 |
| Is It Possible To GROW Planes And Vehicles? |
| Scaly-Foot Snail Works With Iron |
| Looms To Manually Weave Lunar Rover Wheels |
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'Scarif, the off-site backup of all the secret knowledge of the Empire
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'Electronic differentiation of the grotesque, as it says in the specifications - in man, a sense of humor.'
'And as the ball bulleted downward on a screaming slant, it shrank!'
'Hufhuf oil held in static tension... within a viewing tube...'
'The wings were at full spread-rest, their delicate metal interleavings extended.'
'A record that wouldn't get lost and couldn't be destroyed.'
