Influential fiction books related to open manufacturing?
Paul D. Fernhout
parts of a space habitat with an automated manufacturing core that was a big
inspiration to me in regards to developing an interest in fostering
self-replicating space habitats. See:
"The Two Faces of Tomorrow"
http://jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=28
There is also a lot of talk there of studying manufacturing designs the
computer has come up with to see what they are capable of or intended to do.
At least part of Hogan's own inspiration came from talking to people like
Marvin Minsky and the MIT AI lab, although Hogan had a firm grounding in
engineering himself from youthful studies.
As I think of it, in some ways my hopes are just about putting together the
"Two Faces of Tomorrow" space habitat with the social philosophy related to
a post-scarcity society of another of his books called "Voyage From Yesteryear":
"Voyage From Yesteryear".
http://jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=29
Anyone who reads those two Hogan books will see where I am coming from. :-)
And in that sense, how derivative many of my ideas are. :-)
That doesn't mean I agree with Hogan on everything, and Hogan himself has
changed his opinions in some ways in the last quarter century since he wrote
those books. But as a big picture, open manufacturing and space habitation
and techno-social change were in many ways first defined for me in my teens
and early twenties by reading those two books. In the darkest times of
watching political nonsense happen in the USA over the last eight years, I
would go back and reread "Voyage From Yesteryear" to get some hope.
Hogan has other books with similar post-scarcity or social-technical change
themes as well.
More recently, I've been reading some of Iain Banks' Culture novels. But
they weren't influential in forming or reshaping my early interests -- I
sought those out now because I already had those interests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_M._Banks
There is another difference. Iain Banks' novels are so far away from current
practice that they are hard to relate to except in a fantastical way.
Hogan's novels are set in the near future and have a lot of gritty technical
detail, and so are easier to imagine happening in our lifetimes.
Anyone have other fiction books that were influential to them in relation to
open manufacturing?
--Paul Fernhout
Bryan Bishop
> Anyone have other fiction books that were influential to them in relation to
> open manufacturing?
Not anything explicit, unfortunately. Though there is always Orion's Arm:
http://orionsarm.com/
See:
http://www.orionsarm.com/tech/manufacturing.html
Their article on manufacturing does cover some of the basics of what
they call an "autofab", and somewhat about the concept of home
fabricational units, but not so much about archailects or
civilizations keeping things rolling for their own good and other
topics that we discuss here. One of the posts to the orions_arm
mailing list the other day was somebody wondering why in 10,000 years
the Orion's Arm contributors (i.e., anybody) think that money is still
a dominant market influence throughout the arms of the galaxies.
It would be fun to prepare a submission on this mailing list (in this
thread?) to add or subtract as improvements to their article on
manufacturing. Links over to their sections on O'Neill habitats and
some other technology articles would be useful. One of the things
about writing for Orion's Arm is that it takes a while to sufficiently
indulge yourself in their own backstory and context. Luckily some of
their terms are the same ones that are otherwise used from real
day-to-day goings on, since many of them come from the transhuman and
futurist communities.
Also, Star Wars always had a backdrop related to manufacturing -
clones, droids, tie-fighters, etc.
- Bryan