The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Now as you might’ve guessed, I’m almost always in favor of any and all new technologies, unproven or not. Get those government regulations out of the launch path and let the good old profit motive dictate the future. As we well know in this Job Creating culture we love, let the marketplace rule. If you can’t trust a capitalist, who CAN you trust?

I just read they got a new 3-D printer for creating new life forms. Program in a funky DNA sequence , load up the amino acid mix and hit a button. Pretty quick you got an iridescent houseplant or a 6 legged, 4 eared puppy, whatever you want. Experiments are fine. A few new viruses introduced out among the billions we got already the old fashioned way, well, what’s the harm? Might be some human-friendly ones in there and that hobby lab you got turns into the next venture-capitalized pharma farm. The possibilities are endless. The profit potential immense! Sure, the naysayers will worry about some 3-D printout creating the next pandemic, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. You think God didn’t roll the dice?? Check out some of these South Enders we got down here ….

I heard this week Amazon wants to use drones to deliver their goods. The Star Trek teleporter isn’t on-line yet, I guess, so this is their fallback. Oh, I suppose the Luddites will fight this. Skies filled with more drones than starlings. Collisions in congested areas. Free gifts for the earthbound after the crashes, if nothing else. Put some armaments on these birds and UPS package theft on unguarded porches ought to drop significantly.

The future is in the rearview now, closer than it appears maybe, but we’re accelerating fast and there’s no time in this multi-tasked, info-deluged world to start worrying about the dearth of deep analysis. Fasten your seatbelt, download a program for an experimental lunch and keep your twitter feed on 24/7. It’s a brave new world and you don’t have the luxury of fear. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

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I got a buddy across the island here, Techno Tom, who bought himself a 3-D printer this year. Awhile back he’d helped me retrieve all the information off a computer of mine that died the black screen death. A dead computer is a lot like having your house burn down with all your records, photos, writings, letters, all your memorabilia, so when he managed to worm his way into the guts of that carcass and resurrect the information, it was like a fireman digging through ashes and hauling out photo albums of my life. He even tried to rebuild that house, I mean that computer. And Tom had the relays, the mother boards, the circuits, the sensors and the fuses to do it, an entire room full of gizmos and silicon. But there are limits, even for a genius.

He keeps two servers in his garage. Most of us, myself included, hear the word server and nothing comes up on our cranial screen other than the guy who says, I’m Juan, I’ll be your server. He keeps one dedicated to operating the well for his community’s water system, tracks the tides, the water usage of all the neighbors on that well, the chlorine injection, lab tests, probably every toilet flush up and down the line. It goes without saying he programmed the entire thing, a bunch of black boxes stacked six feet high, a science fiction brain flickering with colored lights over in the corner where some folks might park a car.

A few days ago he showed me his hummingbird feeders, cute plastic things hanging from a tree outside, that he’d made with his 3-D printer. The top screws into the bottom, the feeding spouts project out along the tray, cute flowers adorn the sides. Every bit of it had to be programmed into the computer that runs the machine, then the printer injects molten plastic in a line back and forth for about eight hours to build the feeder. It hurts my head to think of this, the exact distance and curvature of the male thread into the female coil, nothing my brain would handle, not in the years I have left, not maybe ever.

Another friend told me Techno had manufactured a part he needed for his mizzus’ boat’s windshield wiper. Why not? Just plunk down at a keyboard and calculate diameters, distances, whatever it needs, feed it to the machine and voila, there’s the part no longer available in the aftermarket. I was afraid to ask Tom if he’d started buying amino acids, DNA, protein packages and various serums. He just smiled, but when I need a new ear or a better thumb, I know who I’m gonna call.

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