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While discussing the possibilities of genetic engineering with my roommate the best idea we came up with after suggesting a tiger the size of a Labrador with a similar personality plus scaled-back teeth and claws (though Arthur C. Clarke came up with that one), as well as toy (as in toy poodle) giraffes
and elephants (pink hue optional), and rejecting the idea of a giant slug that cleans the dishes through a process of digestion - was Chameleonic wallpaper.
Basically you grow chameleon skin in a petrie dish, the same way they can culture skin for grafts. Then install that on a wall. Every few square meters you install a chameleon "module", which consists of an eye, brain and basic digestion/circulatory system to keep the whole system alive. The brain is "wired" into the surrounding skin, and the eye watches the area immediately around it. As the chameleon tries to blend in and hide the wallpaper will automatically adjust itself to your room decor.
Preferably have some areas of the skin controlled by two or more "modules" for smooth gradients.
You'd have to feed it, probably through a network of tubes, but a cheap, liquid wall-feed could be manufactured for this purpose (pureed bugs basically) and this would also remove the need for an overly complex digestive system.
Programmable House Paint
http://www.halfbake...ble_20House_20Paint
The non-biological version of this, halfbaked. [dare99, Mar 10 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
Chromatophores
http://www.ultranet...Chromatophores.html
are what these color-changing cells are called.
Talk about chess pisces... [jutta, Mar 10 2002]
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Eeewww. While GE is taken with a bit of a dim view by some users on this site, this idea is pretty . . . novel. Mind you, I wouldn't want it anywhere near me or my house, or my neighborhood, or, perhaps even the state I live in. |
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Cuttlefish or octopus skin would be quicker to change colour (and you could induce psychedelic wallpaper by alarming your walls). Also by making this a big flat octopus you could use it's suckers to stick it to the wall. Polychrome croissant for you for the use of the word Chamelenonic. |
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<Admin: Fixed spelling in title.> |
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I don't see it as being any different than the programmable house paint being given cameras to change itself, and how is 'let's genetically modify a three inch chameleon to be hundreds of square feet across and fed by smearing bug puree on it' NOT magic? |
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This idea is bound to reappear if you delete it. Of the chameleon wallpaper attempts I've seen so far, it's actually pretty detailed. I'd like for it to stay around. |
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(It certainly has more right to do that than the "Programmable House Paint", whose only reference to a mechanism consists in the words "infinitely programmable.") |
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[sp: Petri dish, after bacteriologist and military physician Richard Julius Petri, who assisted bacteriology pioneer Robert Koch by finding a way of keeping his gelatin in place and uncontaminated.] |
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can you explain to me Jutta, how exactly that chromatophore chess piece moves again? Is it one flip forward and backwards or a diagonal flip? |
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Do you really want wallpaper that poops? |
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That was magicked away in the last paragraph already... |
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no idea how! no idea why! |
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Could you look at the walls without thinking "roadkill"? |
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'Only by me' how? He said that it could be fed with pureed bugs and that that would remove the need for a digestive system. |
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SC I can say that because of jutta's comment
"Of the chameleon wallpaper attempts I've seen so far, it's actually pretty detailed. I'd like for it to stay around."
And he said it would remove the need for an *overly complex* digestive system, not remove the need to digest all together.
I wasn't saying it was a good idea. I think it's disgusting. But just because *you* don't like it, or can't see how it would work, doesn't mean that the idea has been "magicked away". As long as the idea is on the site, I have a right to annotate it if I want.
That said, I see this as a place for constructive, challenging argument, which this is not. Let's play nice, ok? |
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If you have, say, twenty or so chameleon "modules" distributed across the room, most of them will be looking at each other for the majority of the day. As soon as a change occurs (sun shines in the window, person walks through to kitchen for a snack, etc), the chameleon brains would all try to match it. Since they are all seeing the change from a different angle, it is reasonable to assume that their responses will also be different. Brains A through F, on the South wall, would then register the changes in the North wall, and react accordingly. However, brains M through R, on the Nnorth wall, will still be reacting to the South wall's snacking-resident-induced change, and will react to that. |
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Further complicate this with walls East and West, ceiling,and (inevitably) some kind of chameleon/chinchilla chimaeric colour-reactive shag carpet, and you soon have a terrifying feedback-loop riot of pulsating colours. |
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Snacking Man comes back from the kitchen, is faced with the interior-design nightmare that is his living room, and promptly brings back his snack all over the floor. And with this new input of colours, the walls go at their colour-race with renewed vigour... |
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The solution to this one seems to be to stir in some bee, or possibly ant, DNA, and give each room a hive mind, to better co-ordinate their efforts. |
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// and soon you have a terrifying feedback-loop riot of pulsating colours // |
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that sounds quite fun, actually. although, i doubt that chameleon skin changes very quickly, especially when plastered onto a wall, so the 'pulse' would be in hours or minutes, not seconds. |
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Not quite as lively, but perhaps a prismatic and kaleidoscopic scheme to keep things interesting. |
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