Is it just me, or is "utility fog" a useless healt

[Gullible Jones]

Just something I thought of this morning... I was mulling over how utility fog, that staple of Swiss Cheese SF, could possibly be powered and organized, and it hit me - foglets are suspended colloidal particles with arms that let them connect to each other.

In other words, they're like intelligent smoke; and leaving aside the magical-ness of that, their "natural" state when not organized into some structure is to float about freely, suspended in the air - exactly like particles of smoke, but probably a lot denser.

So how would you keep people from inhaling this stuff and fucking up their lungs, as would happen with unintelligent smoke? Hell, utility fog, if (huge if) it could be gotten to work, would probably be even worse than smoke - the arms on the foglets might make it difficult for the respiratory tract to dispose of them. Never mind the density of foglets necessary for a utility fog to be effective.

What really gets on my nerves, of course, is that I've never seen a concession to this possibility in SF. Take the famous Accelerando - you have characters walking about without filter masks in an environment so full of foglets that they can conjure furniture out of it. Pretty dumb, isn't it?

[Broomstick]

Unlike unmagical fog, utility fog could be programmed to avoid being inhaled and move away from respiratory tract entrances. Ditto for how the foglets would avoid being eaten or drunk.

[Gullible Jones]

You have to ask how that would be done. Give them CO2 sensors and little flagella, and program them to run like hell from any CO2 source?

(It's not like utility fog doesn't already stretch suspension of disbelief... )

[Eris]

Shouldn't be a problem at all, actually. Smoke is dangerous because it's a) hot and b) filled with toxic crap like CO. If these were room temperature and made of something that wasn't terribly bioreactive, it'd just pass through your system harmlessly upon inhalation. The only problem then would be avoiding breathing it all in. But you've already got that problem in the form of natural airflow and the like.

[Gomu Niwatari]

I thought that even silica dust could be hazardous.

[Starglider]

In other words, they're like intelligent smoke; and leaving aside the magical-ness of that, their "natural" state when not organized into some structure is to float about freely, suspended in the air - exactly like particles of smoke, but probably a lot denser.

I was originally highly skeptical about utility fog, on several grounds. However dicussions with friends who are active in microrobotics and nanotech research dispelled some of these. Apparently the notion that the foglets are aerostats (i.e. that they float) is a misconception. The default state is actually linked into a huge lattice, with the arms at maximum extension and the optical emitters (if present) emulating transparency. The lattice is supposed to keep track of moving objects and move itself out of the way (temporarily unlinking and then relinking) to allow them to pass. Given this revised concept 'fog' is a bit of a misnomer. Of course the control (software) challenges to make this work are nearly as challenging as the (formidable) hardware challenges.

[Shroom Man 777]

Give the humans filtering nose-plugs. Or static electricity fields that repulse these nano-fogs.

Hrm, a cloud of invisible fog wisping away as people with flashlights approach. That makes for an awesome visualization.

Give humans UV (or some specific whatever of light) glowsticks and program the fog to avoid sources of UV light?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Always reminded me of EDust from Consider Phlebas, given it's closer to what this area of MEMS/nanotech is like than the T-1000 which is more like a smart liquid. A swarm of insects would be more useful, given prevailing wind conditions, and avoid the inhalation issue without other precautions taken.

[Starglider]

Always reminded me of EDust from Consider Phlebas,

EDust only has the (incredible) capabilities it does because the Culture has antigravity, reactionless drive, shields, incredibly dense power sources, FTL computing and implausibly powerful weapons as well as completely mature nanotech.

given it's closer to what this area of MEMS/nanotech is like than the T-1000 which is more like a smart liquid.

T-1000s would be a much easier engineering problem than EDust; indeed it's debetable whether the demonstrated feats of the later are achieveable at all with known physics, whereas everything the T-1000 did is quite plausible for mature nanotech. The T-1000 wouldn't even need to be made of nanobots; in fact it would work much better with microbots, but those microbots would need complex nanoscale internal mechanisms.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The in universe explantion for the T-1000 is that it's a smart alloy, a very special material that has molecular programming, so we're probably talking femtotech, which is a synonym for "magick" to be honest. I did always see it as a nanomorph (or as you say, microbot variant given human cells are on the same scale and perfectly useful), though the EDust idea appeals because of its near total impossibility. And I usually love harder stuff... well, except when it's a handy deus ex machina for dishing out vengeance on thine enemies.

[Gullible Jones]

In other words, they're like intelligent smoke; and leaving aside the magical-ness of that, their "natural" state when not organized into some structure is to float about freely, suspended in the air - exactly like particles of smoke, but probably a lot denser.

I was originally highly skeptical about utility fog, on several grounds. However dicussions with friends who are active in microrobotics and nanotech research dispelled some of these. Apparently the notion that the foglets are aerostats (i.e. that they float) is a misconception. The default state is actually linked into a huge lattice, with the arms at maximum extension and the optical emitters (if present) emulating transparency. The lattice is supposed to keep track of moving objects and move itself out of the way (temporarily unlinking and then relinking) to allow them to pass. Given this revised concept 'fog' is a bit of a misnomer. Of course the control (software) challenges to make this work are nearly as challenging as the (formidable) hardware challenges.

Alright, thanks for clearing that up... Having a lattice as the default state, like an aerogel, sounds workable. Though to be frank, the concept still strikes me as being horribly wanked in SF.