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Thursday, September 15, 2011

The Next Step in Technology: Ubiquitous Electronics and Computing

Ubiquitous electronics and computing.
In our clothes, paper, walls, floors, dresser drawers, coffee cups...
Wait, is this really what we want? Shut up, that's besides the point.

     The point is, graphene is representative of a larger revolution that is going to make our everyday materials electronics. A conducting one-atom thick plane of carbon; looking around my room, I imagine how everything in my room could be covered and with a transparent layer of photovoltaic graphene such that the light being emitted from my overhead lamp is fully absorbed and converted back into electricity again, an eternal fountain. I imagine how the excess thermal energy in my room could be absorbed and stored in an electric form, revolutionizing air conditioning. I imagine how my wall could turn into a screen of any dimension and shape, how the vibrations my voice imparts into the ubiquitous carbon lattice would make the room a microphone, and a speaker for that matter, and how the wall could recognize when a hole is smashed in it, recognize what atoms would be needed to repair the hole, and repair itself.
     These ideas sound like fantasy but if you stop and think about it, the human body itself is so much more fantastical. Stop and think about how our bodies already do self-reparation, and are already embedded with ubiquitous electric networks that enable us to organically store information and analyze sensory input. Stop and think about how chameleons and octopi can already change their skin into vibrant color screens. Evolution has iterated and reiterated for billions of years and has come up with some amazing designs, designs that humans can ponder to inspire their own innovation.

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