24 | New Scientist | 19 October 2019
T
HERE is a long-standing
myth that nature is the
opposite of technology.
Yet now we know that our
industrial machines didn’t
conquer the wilderness; instead,
they caused a climate change
catastrophe that might one day
wipe us out. Knowing this will
dramatically change the way
our future technologies look, as
well as how we interact with them.
Consider the plant tattoo.
Last year, a group at Iowa State
University revealed flexible water
sensors made of graphene that
could be taped onto plants.
When attached to the undersides
of leaves, the devices look like
tattoos. They are used to measure
how healthy and hydrated crops
are, but they could also be adapted
for environmental monitoring.
Corn fields could become drought
prediction systems.
At Northumbria University,
UK, researchers at the Hub
for Biotechnology in the Built
Environment are taking this
idea further. Earlier this year, they
received a grant of £8 million to
incorporate sustainable, biological
materials into buildings. They
will be exploring the idea of walls
made from living, self-repairing
cells and plumbing systems
seeded with microbes that convert
waste into fuel. The ventilation
systems in these buildings might
even include plants with graphene
tattoos that monitor air quality.
Meanwhile, in medicine, people
are using light to manipulate
the behaviour of cells in the
burgeoning field of optogenetics.Carefully aimed beams of light can
activate medicines circulating in
the body, or change the behaviour
of synapses in the brain.
As we cope with environmental
and health needs, the realm
of nature is becoming nearly
indistinguishable from the realm
of technology: plants are sensors;
light is a form of medicine. Our
future won’t be anything like the
Apple Store version of tomorrow,
with its clean white lines and
antiseptic designs. Instead, it
will be dirty and full of bacteria.
And that will be cutting edge.
How do we prepare ourselves
for a future where advancedmachines look like a sunny day
on the farm? I think we need better
stories about what is really coming
next. That is why I sometimes
write science fiction instead of
reporting the facts.
In my new novel, The Future
of Another Timeline, a cast of
heroic geologists struggles to
understand a piece of technology
that is so advanced that it looks
exactly like slabs of rock. You see,
they have discovered that time
machines are embedded in
ancient shield rock formations
that were part of Earth’s crust
more than half a billion years ago.
Of course, my characters know
they weren’t the first to stumbleacross these wormholes that open
when you pound rock against rock
in five locations across the planet.
People have been smacking rocks
together for a long time, so it is
pretty likely that Palaeolithic
people were jumping into the time
machines long before science was
invented. And then there are the
written records from classical
antiquity about magical portals
that can be opened by drumming
on the ground.
It is only in the age of science
that my geologists finally figure
out that humans have been
mucking around with the
timeline forever, by banging on
an ancient machine interface that
opens wormholes to the past.
For these geologists, time travel
is like metallurgy. There is a long
history of people making iron,
but a relatively short history of
people understanding why iron
comes from heating and blending
different kinds of shiny nuggets
they mined from rocks.
At last, science has progressed
far enough for the geologists to
comprehend how advanced the
time machines are. They are a part
of nature, built into Earth by
someone or something that left
them behind for reasons we can
only hope to understand one day.
Cosmologist Sean Carroll
has assured me that time travel
will never exist, which is kind
of a bummer. Science fiction
is fiction, after all. But it is also a
way for us to imagine a radically
different future. Nature won’t
be erased by machines. Instead,
it will absorb them. ❚MARCIA STRAUB/GETTY IMAGESThis column appears
monthly. Up next week:
James Wong“ How do we prepare
ourselves for a future
where advanced
machines look like a
sunny day on the farm?”The dirty, biological future of technology Imagine
a world where tech has become so advanced that it is
indistinguishable from nature, writes Annalee NewitzThis changes everything
What I’m reading
Questioning Collapse,
an essay collection about
why certain concepts
of civilisational collapse
are both scientifically
and historically incorrect.What I’m watching
The trailer for Picard,
the new Star Trek series.
I need this in my brain.What I’m working on
Promoting my novel,
The Future of Another
Timeline, which comes
out in the UK this month.Annalee’s week
Annalee Newitz is a science
journalist and author. Their
novel Autonomous won
the Lambda Literary Award
and they are the co-host
of the Hugo-nominated
podcast Our Opinions
Are Correct. You can
follow them @annaleen
and their website is
techsploitation.comViews Columnist