[John Edds]

My pleasure.

I slipped and didn’t add it:

A Whack on the Side of the Head, by Roger von Oech, is another excellent book on creative thinking.

In the vein of the above “How to Learn About Everything”/creativity-fuel: browse through patents and patent applications online (Google Patents makes this easy, and you can save to PDFs). Some of them are complete nonsense, the output of cranks with disposable income, but most are legit, and with enough browsing you will come across gleaming gems. Follow the patent citations forward and backward in time. Follow the citations of citations of citations . . . Is this invention obsolete now? Are there overlooked variations in older patents that could be useful? What else, if anything, have the inventor(s) invented?

[John Edds]

Expanding on my previous comment about teaching creativity, a list of books on creative thinking that I have and heartily recommend to others:

The Universal Traveler, by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall

Cracking Creativity, Thinkertoys, and Creative Thinkering, by Michael Michalko

The Art of Innovation, by Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman

Zig Zag, by Keith Sawyer

How to Get Ideas, by Jack Foster

The broader your knowledge base, the more creative you can be. Creativity can make nothing ex nihilo.

https://metamodern.com/2009/05/17/how-to-understand-everything-and-why/

https://metamodern.com/2009/05/27/how-to-learn-about-everything/

Systems engineering principles that, when applied, lead to radically reduced waste:

https://metamodern.com/2013/06/06/must-read-papers-for-anyone-who-practices-manages-or-thinks-about-systems-engineering/

Books about inspiring technologies that can’t be manufactured yet, but that are wholly grounded in known physics. They serve to dispel rampant misconceptions about advanced nanotechnology/molecular manufacturing, and inspire optimistic futuristic visions that could come to be, perhaps within half a century–if enough scientists and engineers could be attracted to work toward the goal.

Radical Abundance (popular audience) and Nanosystems (technical work, expanded doctoral thesis) by K. Eric Drexler

Nanofuture (popular audience), by J. Storrs Hall

Hacking Matter (popular audience), by Wil McCarthy

Because muzzy-headed thinking isn’t your friend:

The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan

[John Edds]

Teaching creativity should definitely be a part of it. Creativity isn’t some nigh magical ability that some people are just born with and others aren’t. It can be taught. Sure, some people will be more creative than others, like some people are better at math or spotting errors in reasoning.

Inculcate positive thinking and optimism, without going overboard into detrimental territory. Some doses from Buckminster Fuller and other famous optimists’ writings could help.

Tenacity, to plug on when things don’t work, and to resist the worthless gainsaying of pessimists. Robert Goddard, for example, had failure after failure and took a lot of crap from critics. Who laughs at rockets now?

Obviously, they’ll need education in STEM. Can’t make the future on wishful thinking and fairy dust.

[John Edds]

Probably features that result in better health. More effective immune systems, faster healing after injuries, that sort of thing.

Everything else (augmented senses, increased strength . . .) would be much better if they were based on non-living hardware–flesh is pathetically weak compared to the materials that engineers work with. Cryogenically cooled infrared videocamera sensors aren’t something that can be genetically engineered.

Plus you can take hardware off and swap it out as needed. No, I don’t need built-in webbed feet and hands to swim better; I can put on webbed gloves and flippers when I go swimming. If I need substantially better hearing, I can use one of those parabolic dish microphone things, instead of looking like Mikey Mouse for the rest of my life.

 

[John Edds]

The Ghost in the Shell, by Shirow Masamune

I love it for various reasons. It presents a flawed, but overall positive, richly-detailed future world. It’s packed with interesting ideas that not only feel fresh a quarter of a century after it was authored, but they are becoming more relevant as time goes on.

[John Edds]

I think there should be property rights in space.

Worlds could be zoned up, like we do on Earth (itself a celestial object). There could be locations open to mining or building, and some choice locations reserved as Natural Parks. There probably wouldn’t be the latter on most asteroids and comets, the prime targets for mining and development, because they’re mundane rocks and really dirty balls of ice.

The point of going to space is that someday some people will live out there and never need come back to Earth. If you can’t own places, and by extension things made out of atoms extracted from those places, then how would any of it work? It’d be like encouraging people to explore outside of Africa 70,000 years ago, but oh no, you can’t hunter-gather and farm and build cities in Mesopotamia, Europe, Asia etc. when you get there.

[John Edds]

But the reverse is true. We’ve been remade by our technology since at least Homo erectus.

 

[John Edds]

Imagination is abstract, and doesn’t necessarily lead to anything tangible. Creativity is concrete, it’s applied imagination to make something.

[John Edds]

Tanel, I think you’d like Masamune Shirow’s The Ghost in the Shell.

He was thinking about issues including cyberbrain hacking a quarter of a century ago.

[John Edds]

Gimbaled platforms open up interesting possibilities. Have a look at Mark Rosheim’s robotic gimbal wrist mechanisms: https://www.anthrobot.com/

Imagine being strapped into a standing position on a platform that has a hemispherical pointing envelope.

[John Edds]

Education of children to become rounded, successful adults that lead interesting lives is a big theme in The Diamond Age.

The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer of the novel contains a vast interactive and evolving story that is designed to encourage curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking while it passes on knowledge ranging from learning how to read, to software coding and mechanical engineering.

[John Edds]

Revision to the above:

Instead of six motorized spools, I think a better design would employ eight. There would be a cluster of three spools on the exoskeleton at each of the elbows. One of the cords on the wearer’s left side would attach to the wall off to their left, and the other two cords would attach to the walls in front of and behind the suit-wearer. The right side, of course, would be a mirror of same. The last two cords would spool from the exoskeleton’s spine on the user’s back and attach to the ceiling, just as before.

To accommodate numerous users within the same room, instead of anchoring to the walls or meters away on the floor, users could anchor the cords to a specialized freestanding frame that would be bolted to the floor. I picture them looking like those geodesic domes on playgrounds, but prolate instead of hemispherical and only around 2.75 meters in diameter when measured 2 meters above the base.

[John Edds]

 . . . but I also think we need something that gives you the ability to sit on chairs, lean on walls, and trip over a rock, right?

I think the next level is no longer really portable, but that’s totally cool.  I’m thinking that’s where we have something we get into that has mechanical.  It wouldn’t have to be a full suit but it would have to have a full support structure and be connected to something that provides that last bit of support.  It could only connect at one point, but it would have to be strong enough to fully support your weight, regardless of angle, right?

I gave this a little thought, and I think this could be made semi-portable if the support structure consists of high tensile cords* on motorized spools.

Upon entering a new room, an individual would click the cords’ carabiners into I-bolts in the ceiling and on the walls. Lets say there are six cords: one to each of the four walls, and two to the ceiling–for the unlikely event that one should break. Alternatively, instead of anchoring to the walls, the cardinal-points-anchoring could be to recessed clipping points in the floor.

If a room’s ceiling is inconveniently high, no problem. The cords would have a low enough mass that they and their carabiners could be lofted to the ceiling using a quadcopter.

*Carbon fiber, aramid, basalt fiber, UHMWPE fiber, whatever.

[John Edds]

There’s no need for the exenteration of your spleen. Why don’t you write a short story featuring these . . . universal interface suits, or whatever you want to call them?

Maybe they’ll include it in Hieroglyph Vol. 2.

[John Edds]

Scrap the spherical wheels idea, someone else has come up with a better solution that could maybe be adapted for your idea.

It’s an omni-directional treadmill: https://www.infinadeck.com/

Instead of a large treadmill that the user walks on, the “soles” of their boots have powered bidirectional tread-belts.

Now you may be thinking, “We don’t have motors with the power-to-mass ratio to make that possible yet,” and you’d be right. But they could be constructed in the near-ish future thanks to this discovery: https://io9.com/scientists-just-created-some-of-the-most-powerful-muscl-1526957560 Convert the reciprocating motion of the muscles to rotary using any of the various mechanisms that have been devised over the past few centuries that can do that.

 

 

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