What's Been and What's Ben

Q-switching for plants – some lasers do this thing where they only are on for a short pulse every very small time interval in order to take full advantage of the gain medium (stuff that does the lasing) and I think plants could do the same thing. This summer I want to try growing lots of some random generic plant under lights that pulse not only the proper color of light (by LEDS) for the pigments (gain medium) and at the proper frequency. I will use a small variety of color (knowledge exists) and a wide variety of frequencies, duty cycle (how short of a pulse), and general growing conditions.

Coherence-based radio amplification/security – if you send out light (not radio waves) with similar wavelengths (colors) they will spatially beat together at set spatial/temporal intervals. Waves are waves, so what if we transmit radio with a bunch of very close frequencies to reduce the total power required and reducing the area that signal is transmitted to? So only certain magic spots could pick up the signal. Think of having really bad radio station reception, but your choice of a very large number of stations to pick up on. It could change what frequency you are operating on as you move around by transitioning to better frequencies or something. I never plan on implementing this. It would be a more secure signal since you would be broadcasting to a limited area and would be jumping around while moving.

Why, Robots – I think bioengineering will replace the need for mechanical robots. Living things are efficient and do most things other than discrete math (hyper-deterministic stuff) better. I think zombie monkeys that do our laundry and grow flower bouquets on their backs will be in the future. Also we need some kind of plant that is a solar cell – producing electrical energy instead of growing or at least putting their energy into something we can chemically extract better, like gasoline berries. On second thought, lets have mechanical robots too! In the future (very distant) we will have a renewable world because everything will be alive, self-repairing, and designed to bend to our will to become cars, houses, food, clothing, and newspapers. Things need these properties to be stuff in = stuff out compliant.