Curing Cancer and Fighting with Artificial People
Two exquisite scientific discoveries were announced this week. The first is the development of contact lenses that cure blindness. Scientists from the University of New South Wales and researchers at Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital have pioneered a technique which harvests your own stem cells to construct a kind of “miracle contact lens.” Patients who wear it for just a few weeks have their sight restored.
I’ve been reading about it all morning, and haven’t found references to whether or not it will work for people with astigmatism or other, minor sight problems. But I don’t see (no pun intended) why it wouldn’t work. Let there be light.
The second item is something I’ve often written about in fiction, nonfiction, and screenplay formats: The long-awaited application of nanoscale devices to destroy cancer cells. Carbon nanotubes — incredibly tiny and spectacularly tough materials — are injected into a patient’s body. They attach to the cancer cells, and then scientists use a laser to destroy the cell. Nanoengineering has been hailed as the building blocks of tomorrow’s scientific revolutions in nearly every field (construction, military, fuel efficiency, communications, etc.) yet the medical breakthroughs possible are what should tantalize us the most. Someday, no more chemo or radiation therapy. Rather, just get your nanoshot and let the robots do the work.
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Not all technological developments are made of awesome. Some are pretty pointless — i.e. the wireless keyboard. (Seriously, when will I ever need to type a paragraph across the street from my computer?)
Others are downright annoying.
Consider Exhibit A: The artificial people who now answer customer service lines.
Sure the technology is always improving, but right now about 45% of my “conversations” with these robots require me to shout each syllable like a Dalek from Doctor Who: “TER-MIN-ATE ACC-OUNT! TER-MIN-ATE!!!“
Last night I called the local theater to check show-times for mighty Pixar’s newest offering, Up. The ever-polite artificial girl answered my call. Here’s a sampling of the conversation:
“Please say a movie name, or say find a theater.”
“Up,” I say.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Please say a movie name, or say find a theater”
“Up.“
“I’m sorry, I still didn’t get that. Use your touch-tone pad to dial the first three letters of the film you wish to see.”
The first three letters? Oh boy, here we go again.
The silence after I type the letter “P” seems to last for a thousand years.
“You did not enter three letters,” the artificial girl tells me.
“That’s because there are only two!“
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. If you’re having trouble, you can dial back…”
“Main menu!“
“I’m sorry, I still didn’t get that.”
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE!“
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Finally, two pieces of good personal this week. My story The Theseus Woman was accepted this week in a relatively new science-fiction publication called OG Speculative Fiction. It is a story of a man who drove his wife to suicide, and now the guilt is driving him to reconstruct her through virtual reality. Much irony is the result.
Also, the neo-pulp magazine Astonishing Adventures has published my 1930s’era Shanghai adventure story Dragon of the Veil. The editorial team nurtures an enduring passion for the pulp magazine era, and they have done a truly admirable job in paying tribute to it. Resurrected for aficionados are the two-fisted, square-jawed heroes and sultry femme fatales, daredevil aviatrixes and fiendish masterminds. Today there’s a lot of excitement over superheroes, but I prefer the pulps which preceded them (and out of which they sprouted.)
Now watching: The Bridge on the River Kwai, X-Men, Hard Times.
Now reading: The Physics of Immortality
