Everything falls together: The Guide to the New Materials RevolutionSkylar Tibbits (Princeton University Press), 224 pages. $24.95
It is our hope that the things we create will stay together. It is important that bridges don’t move and buildings are stable. We also want our shoes to be sturdy. We give our creations the highest praise: it may outlive us. Engineers and designers have always looked up to this sense of stability as their north star. Our built environment is made up of structures and artifacts that have been meticulously assembled so they can last a lifetime without deterioration. They are difficult to dispose of even when they become obsolete.
Skylar Tippbits proposes a different model inspired by biology, which is in contrast to the perfect design model. He argues that technology can be used to make things like nature, instead of producing polished finished products. Artifacts can be grown that are self-assembled, adaptive, self repair, evolve and then disassemble when they’re done. Tibbits believes such a pathway is possible because of his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other labs around the globe. You can read more about In Everything falls togetherIn this article, he describes early experiments which show that these insane ideas may be possible.
Technology mimicking nature is not a new idea. In the 1950s scientists created small sets that encouraged components to self-assemble. These are some of the oldest working prototypes. Tibbits continued this trend of research with his Self-Assembly Lab, MIT. He explains how his laboratory can create systems that allow simple parts to “fall together”, creating complex structures on their own. Many designs use the material as the basis for self-assembly. It can be heated, shaken, pressurized or heated to change its shape and link to other pieces or by dozens more behaviors it will join with other pieces to make a new thing. Tibbits comes to think of this stuff as “active materials”—or even better, as “programmed matter.”
Tibbits’ and his colleagues may be able to do the most in their labs but it pales in comparison with what simple bacteria can do when it grows. However, today’s dawn is a beginning, similar to the early years of computerization. Therefore, we need to be open to all possibilities. This book is meant to be a catalog of what’s possible.
Why not use local producers to produce finished, polished products instead of centralized factories? Tibbits team experimented with a water tank that would allow the engineered parts of wood to selfassemble in a chair. You don’t have to build as many structures when things are self-assembling. As a cell joins other cells, it needs very little scaffolding. It is possible to direct each individual piece from inside the factory, without the need for any manual or linear handholding. Manufacturing could be done in a much smaller space with self-assembly.
Why not create buildings that adapt over time, rather than building large buildings that have to be torn down when they no longer serve their purpose (e.g. a car dealership)? You can make shoes that are made of material that changes according to the way its wearer walks and runs. Tibbits discusses construction techniques that depend on thousands of small “bottom-up”, components that are capable of rearranging themselves as they go. Objects would be sensitive to how they are used, and they would contain in themselves—engineered in their materials or imbued with sensors—the ability to modify themselves in response.
Why not replace your smartphone with glass that self-repairs? This is what bone can do. Some plastics have the ability to heal themselves, as well as concrete that self-heals. Different agents can penetrate concrete to grow materials that fill in and repair cracks.
Instead of throwing away mountains of products or burning them in toxic furnaces and landfills, manufactured products can be reassembled into the original form. Tibbits describes 3D printed metal objects. These are made with different forms to achieve the ideal form. Interim versions of the object are then returned to their material hopper for reuse until it is perfect. Some other experiments employ special bolts to assemble a product. After the object has been assembled, they are heated and the threads of the bolts disappear, allowing the product’s disassembly.
Technology should be able to make things strong in the same manner as an oyster can grow a hard shell. A half-ton cow is made from small blades of grass. Trees produce superstrong cellulose material that decays after its lifespan. Even better, we want steel made at the same size as an oyster, beef made of grass and meat made from wood.
Tibbits highlights many other lab experiments that are possible as part of our effort to make technologically more biological. However, I was unable to find any of the above commercially practical. These are just hints, promises and suggestions for directions. Everything falls together is more a manifesto than a pure journalistic investigation. This is a vision rather than a description.
Tibbits lists everything that is necessary in order to realize this dream. This list contains more interdisciplinarity research to explore the spaces between engineering, design, botany, software programming and metallurgy. It is necessary to create a common language that can be used mathematically as well as literary to enable researchers from different fields to interact with each other. To manage the unknown frontiers that such a new world might open up, it is imperative to create new legal, social and regulatory norms. There are many questions about who is responsible for a system that generates. If my device remakes itself according to how I use it, who is responsible for any harm it may create—me or the device maker? If a building re-arranges itself into a novel and breakthrough configuration while I am using it, who “owns” that innovation—me or the building owner? These inventions could lead to many more problems if Tibbits vision is realized.
They will come true “when”, I’d say. Because the beauty of this small book is its ability to present the fact-of-fact reality of the bizarre idea of biology-like technology without hype or exaggeration. Here are bunches of experiments from around the world showing that parts of the vision really can be done—and that if they are done, they will be beneficial in many ways.
Although I believe Tibbits vision is certain, it won’t happen soon or quickly. It is difficult to create magic, and funding models favor the interdisciplinarity required to achieve it. Although these results will be remarkable, the pace of change is slow. Tibbits does not suggest an exponential improvement, and neither do I.
In some ways this is good news. It means that we still have time to plan for what lies ahead. We can begin to address the problems of adapting devices and buildings, which are out of our control. Tibbits is a great example of how to compress this vast vision into a concise, easily-read book. You can see what lies ahead! He says it. We should all look at him.