2076-02-21 Making Stuff Up
Moving from waking dream to solid reality is no longer fantastic magic.
The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before.—Kurt Vonnegut
Being creative today has a much wider range of possibilities than humans have ever had before. We can create on scales from the geographic to the molecular. We have preserved or revived every art and craft from prehistory to the present. We have the largest human audience in history, an insatiable beast that must be entertained and enlightened. People have more free time and less demand on it than even early hunter-gatherers.
Many people choose to practice traditional arts and crafts using authentic tools and methods. Humans never truly give up any technology. You can find people today knapping flint knives, weaving reed baskets, and machining steam engines and mechanical calculators, earning acclaim among their fellow enthusiasts and a ready demand for their products.
Other people adopt new methods and tools as soon as they are available. Early adopters revel in the ability to shape new projections with a wave of the hand and a few spoken words. Moving from waking dream to solid reality is no longer fantastic magic; it is simply the application of highly evolved CAD/CAM. Today everyone has access to a mature suite of technologies that can put an idea solidly into the creator's hand as rapidly as the molecules can be assembled.
People frequently use this kind of system to deal with structural damage from storms, floods, and wildfires. A set of photos or a fly-around video is enough to give the system baseline data, and from that it can build a usefully accurate model of the existing structure, including all the chaotic damage. The operator then talks, hand-waves, and points to manipulate the model: Remove this, strip that, salvage these carefully. Then new and recycled materials available are presented and manipulated into place, down to the individual fastener level. The system runs continuous checks for structural integrity, pointing out weak spots to reinforce against future catastrophes. When the salvage and rebuild processes are optimized, the system cuts a complete set of work orders for the robot crews and their human supervisor, who may be the structure's occupant.
It is not uncommon for a structure to be completely restored within a few days of a damaging event. With each repair, the structure grows stronger and more resistant to future damage.
It took me decades of sustained effort to make that possible.