New Scientist - 19.10.2019

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 advanced

machines 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 stumble

across 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 IMAGES

This 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 Newitz

This 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.com

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