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European Visions for the Knowledge Age |
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European Visions for the Knowledge Age
A Quest for New Horizons in
the Information Society
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- Paul T Kidd (Ed)
- ISBN 978-1-901864-08-3 (Paperback)
- Price: See buy
on-line link
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- Chapter 4
- Micro Fabrication
- Brahim Dahmani
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- Introduction
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- Many things have been converted
into a digital stream of data, and more will follow. Bits are
everywhere! A bit (either a one or a zero) is the smallest unit
of information handled by a computer. These are represented physically
by a very small pulse of electricity sent through a circuit,
or a small point on a magnetic surface that can change state
to represent either one or zero. Bits convey little information
of use to humans, but they can be manipulated by computers to
present information in a way that is useful to people.
In the future, individuals will have at home, as attachments
to internet broadband connections, not only entertaining audio-video
equipment, but also micro fabrication systems. These will be
able to generate three-dimensional objects as good as the ones
bought in shops or delivered by express couriers such as DHL,
UPS or Fedex.
This latter aspect is much less well documented, since there
is still a trend to value much more the digital content and the
intellectual part, than the objects and the hardware. These are
considered as a degraded state, cumbersome, expensive to duplicate
and heavy to transport. All the value is thought to be in the
immaterial: in the bits. Atoms are seen to be remnants from the
past: something to be eliminated if possible. This thinking has
been very much developed and exemplified in Nicholas Negroponte's
famous book entitled Being Digital [1]. Nevertheless people are
not always listening to music, or watching movies coming from
remote and often unknown locations. People still drive cars,
wear clothes and eat food.
The conceptualisation of an object in the mind precedes its actual
construction. This scheme will still be true in the information
society. Smart objects will include not only intelligence in
their embodiment, but also during conception, production and
recycling.
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