[ExI] Ant mega-colony takes over world

[Emlyn]

2009/7/2 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
>
>> On Behalf Of spike
>> ...
>>
>> For tiny bio-robots, ants are a good choice, hard to beat:
>> they reproduce quickly, and they are already preadapted for
>> doing some curious behavior when the appropriate chemical
>> signal is present.
>>
>> spike
>
> Or think of this: imagine ants could be trained to take threads of aramid
> fiber, and walk along an ordinary thin wire of some sort, or even a string,
> place the aramid fiber somewhere along the string, tack down one end with
> some kind of epoxy material, then stick it down along the length of the
> string every few cm.  Jillions of the little bastards keep adding more and
> more aramid fibers and tacking them in place until they evolve a structural
> element of astoundng tensile strength.  They grow a kevlar rope.
>
> Or how about having them carry radio frequency identifier tags, then wander
> about inside the walls of a house known to have termites.  If they encounter
> the termite nest, the termite soldiers slay the ant, which then makes the
> RFID tag stop wandering.  If a number of the tags seem to be stopping in one
> place, we know that is a suspected termite area, so we get a magnetron tube,
> perhaps scrounged from an old microwave oven, and cook the damn termites in
> the wall without poisons or other expenses.
>
> Or perhaps we could figure out how to program the mandibled beasts to go out
> and remove shell weed from the rye fields.  If so, what would we call them?
> Shell weed ants?  (No thanks, I think I will sit this one out.)
>
> {8^D
>
> Darwin would be so impressed.  (With the ants, not the wordplay.)
>
> spike
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>

Do you think you could build a 2 dimensional surface, some kind of
sheet, divided in pixels which could each emit various ant pheromones?
I guess those would be phixels.

>From a computer's point of view, that surface would be like a big
display, a Smellovision.

Then, you could control ant behaviour by control the pheromone release
at each phixel.

Maybe that would help in your plans?

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related
http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting
http://emlynoregan.com - main site