NanaTechnology Fog - A Complete Utility fog
With the right programming, the robots can exert any force in any direction on the surface of any object. They can support the object, so that it apparently floats in the air. They can support a person, applying the same pressures to the seat of the pants that a chair would. They can exert the same resisting forces that elbows and fingertips would receive from the arms and back of the chair. A program running in the Utility Fog can thus simulate the physical existence of an object.
Although this class of nanotechnology has been envisioned by the technocracy since early times, and has been available to us for over twenty years, the name is more recent. A mundane scientist, J. Storrs Hall provided animportant baseline examination of the issues involved in the application and design of Utility fog. He envisioned it as an active polymorphic material designed as a conglomeration of 100-micron robotic cells or foglets, built using molecular nanotechnology. An appropriate mass of Utility Fog could be programmed to
simulate, to the same precision as measured by human senses, most of the physical properties, such as hardness, temperature, light, of any macroscopic object, including expected objects such as tables and fans, but also materials such as air and water. The major exceptions would be taste, smell, and transparency. To users, it would seem like the Star Trek Holodeck except that it would use atoms instead of holographic illusions. It is an indication of the degree to which our science and technology have permeated society that a non member could so accurately describe and visualise the way in which "Utility Fog" operates.
Nanotechnology is based on the concept of tiny, self-replicating bots. The Utility Fog is a very simple extension of the idea:Suppose, instead of building the object you want atom by atom, the tiny robots linked their arms together to form a solid mass in the shape of the object you wanted?. Then, when you got tired of that avant-garde coffee table, the robots could simply shift around a little and you'd have an elegant Queen Anne piece instead.
The color and reflectivity of an object are results of its properties as an antenna in the micron wavelength region. Each robot could have an "antenna arm" that it could manipulate to vary those properties, and thus the surface of a Utility Fog object could look just about however you wanted it to. A "thin film" of robots could act as a video screen, varying their optical properties in real time. Rather than paint the walls, coat them with Utility Fog and they can be a different color every day, or act as a floor-to-ceiling TV. Indeed, make the entire wall of the Fog and you can change the floor plan of your house to suit the occasion. Make the floor of it and never gets dirty, looks like hardwood but feels like foam rubber, and extrudes furniture in any form you desire. Indeed, your whole domestic environment can be constructed from Utility Fog; it can form any object you want (except food) and whenever you don't want an object any more, the robots that formed it spread out and form part of the floor again.
You may as well make your car of Utility Fog, too; then you can have a "new" one every day. But better than that, the *interior* of the car is filled with robots as well as its shell. You'll need to wear holographic "eyephones" to see, but the Fog will hold them up in front of your eyes and they'll feel and look as if they weren't there. Although heavier than air, the Fog is programmed to simulate its physical properties, so you can't feel it: when you move your arm, it flows out of the way. Except when there's a crash!. Then it forms an instant formfitting
"seatbelt" protecting every inch of your body. You can take a 100-mph impact without messing your hair. But you'll never have a 100-mph impact, or any other kind.
Remember that each of these robots contains a fair-sized computer. They already have to be able to talk to each other and coordinate actions in a quite sophisticated way (even the original nano-assemblers have to, build any macroscopic object). You can simply cover the road with a thick layer of robots. Then your car "calls ahead" and makes a reservation for every position in time and space it will occupy
during the trip.
