A Brief Extollment of the Virtues of Nanoshields · 11:18pm Apr 18th, 2012
So, I was thinking about forcefields and shields and how to make them scientific. Before, I had simply dismissed the idea as silly, goofy nonsense. Then, a stroke of insight hit me.
Nanobots.
Take a jack, the six-pointed things you hit with a bouncy ball. That's the basic piece for the nanoshielding technology. Take the points and turn them into electromagnetics. You have Piece 1 of the puzzle, though a lot bigger. These would be rigid when bound together, and brittle, too.
For Piece 2, think a little bit more. A motor, moving the stick to point to a different direction. This way, smooth curves could be achieved, and, if the proper resistance to movement was applied, you could have bendable shields. This would also be useful for actually motorizing the nanoshields, which I shall describe later. Piece 2 has short electromagnets.
Piece 3 is pretty much Piece 2, but with longer electromagnets. This would give it a wider range of movements and more force of movement, but less delicate movement.
Combining these three pieces, you could make bendable fields to cushion blows, hard fields to block and deflect, generally a good deal of deliciously magical technological prowess. But, the question remains. How do you power it, and how do you control it?
Power is simple. A generator with docks, and the pieces could chain together to provide power to active units. But how would mobility work? Simple. An implant in the torso, attached to the lung. It would draw from the windpipe, and require deeper breathing to operate. What it would do, however, is provide fusion, because I assume by the time we can build nanobots doing half of these things we'll have fusion, and by the time we can build nanobots doing all of these things we'll have room temperature superconductors, which will provide flying cars and cool stuff like that, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Controlling, however, is a different matter. We already have devices that can read the brain, and as technology advances we will have smaller and more powerful devices. A tricorder is not just science fiction anymore, it is being thought of how we can use our technology to create one. Simply attaching one of these, either in a helmet or another implant, to the brain and using signals to control the nanoshields would be conceivable then, wouldn't it? We are already working on modular matter; matter that can change shape to go through obstacles or other such things; and simply applying the idea on a smaller scale would work for nanoshielding. Send the signals from the brain via radio to small transceivers and you have control.
With nanoshields, you could use them for levitation. You could wrap them around an object and move it at will. With all this, 'magic' might not be so far away.
As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Wow. I thought I was the only one who over-analyzed how video game mechanics could work in RL...
2578747
How do you people keep finding my blog? =P
But yeah, I overanalyzed a lot of stuff. That said, I do still really like nanoshields.
2579481 I stumbled upon one of your fanfics while searching godmode. Not the game, just, you know, godmode. Then I saw your blog posts on the right and...
Also, just to be clear, I'm impressed by your analysis.