Programmable Tatoos

[yvanleterrible]

My daughter had her tongue and her nose pierced. When she wants to provoke my wife she just sticks it out. Yuck!

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I asked her what she'd've thought if I'd had a pre-existing tattoo, and she said she'd've dealt with it, but that I wasn't allowed now

Bummer. I suppose that rules out a MobileRead tatoo!
Even if someone did consider that, an electronic one would be the best way to go... in case the logo changes!

[nekokami]

Stick with henna. You may have to renew it every few weeks, but you're a lot less likely to catch a dread disease, and you can change it as the whimsy suits.

[NatCh]

But can I get henna that'd only visible under ultraviolet? I want it for playing Laser Tag, you know.

[nekokami]

Hm... mutant genetically modified UV henna... I dunno... you can certainly get semi-permanent uv dye, though. You'll shed it with your outer epidermal cells after several days, but it should last through the game of tag.

[NatCh]

Yah, that's what I'm doing now (I've got a rubber stamp for applying it), but finding decent UV ink is a bit of a challenge sometimes.

[Azayzel]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

Well,I'll have to admit that I'm not overly interested in applying this kind of technology for things like Tattoos. I think that is an extreme waste of time and resources...but that's perhaps just me.

The medical side could be interesting, but I'm afraid that there is still too little real development done in that science.
Nanotechnology, nanorobots and similar applications are constantly on the "verge of breakthrough", but if you look closely you will see that there is very little behind most of those announcements.

Now let me point out something that is a "personal dream" for me...
Some kind of Nanotechnology could be employed in the human body, but unlike current plans, I'd like to see maintenance crews instead of surgical implements...little security and repair bots floating around our system and taking care that things don't get out of control. These devices could create a basis for some serious medical, educational and entertaining applications, including eskin-like displays like the ones shown above.
If you look at what we have right now, it looks lik ehtis to me:

You have to implant the displays, prevent the body from "healing" and destroying or obscuring them. You'll also have to use some kind of energy supply because they most certainly won't be able to use the biochemical energy the body provides. Replacing the batteries for one of these would probably not be fun...

For applications like this I would rather go with the biological growing option: Instead of implanting a mini-screen somewhere in/on your body, you should try to either "grow" a biological equvalent of a screen or (even better but less impressive of course) have your nanobots transmit the information directly to your brain.

And here comes the problem:
The human body has a tremendous potential, but most of it is not user-accessible (to use a very computer-age wording).
If you could manage to create a brain-to-computer interface that gives ou more control over that potential, then you'd be able to do a lot more. the question is whether that would really work or just drive you mad...
the alternative as I see it would be an interface that does not change body-to-brain connection and awareness but rather acts as a communication relay from the brain to the artificially enhanced parts of your body and of course also things like a "memory-enhancement" could then be possible. Interaction would then work like a normal computer interface but without mouse-keyboard or similar input and with some mind-control instead.

Unfortunately we still know so little of how everthing works that such a system is impossible.
Until we know more and can do a lot more with our technology, I think concepts like the one shown above are not really going to do anything useful. Monitoring Insulin levels and things like that can be managed with an external device...and maybe that's better because you can always change the battery and/or buy a new device that way if something breaks...

Cool speculation CommanderROR, have you ever read in books by Michio Kaku? Some pretty interesting stuff there, and not just fancy whimsical stuff either. I've always been interested in nanotech myself and keep watching to see where research vs implementation has gone so far; not too much beyond carbon nanotubes, but there are still a few companies trying to advance this. As to the biomedical field, nothing really there yet except for designer meds that are essentially protein-based bots that, mostly, do what they're supposed to.

On the SciFi from, there are quite a few good books that are fun reads: Deus Machine, Firechild, Perfect Dark, and HammerJack just to name a few. The first two are nano/genetic-based scifi while the latter are cool techno-scifi.