posted
Really Teshi? I felt like I'd been posting less than usual lately. About five minutes ago I thought to myself that my Hatrack enthusiasm must be waining, and was wondering if I'd have a period of absence from the board. This story seemed like one tailor made for Hatrack though, if you'll pardon the pun.
The good thing about a shirt like this is that if you got hungry enough you could always eat it.
I wonder how you'd feed a living shirt? Would you soak it in a nutrient bath when you weren't wearing it, or would it be parasitic, somehow tapping into its wearer's metabolism? I wonder if you could get furry ones for winter? Or for the summer, for that matter, to prevent the shirt's getting sunburned. I wonder if they could incorporate some of the genes that allow an electric eel to generate electricity, and use the shirt to power PDAs, cell phones, and such?
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posted
Maybe it's the biologist in me, but I don't find this creepy at all. I don't know that I would wear such a jacket (for one thing I expect them to be hella expensive in my lifetime), but I don't see anything wrong with it.
On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with killing animals for leather, either, so I'm not sure I see the point.
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posted
*thinks* Wasn't this in a horror book I read once? Something about a serial killer going after women with good skin in order to make a suit for himself?
I don't think I finished, and it completely creeped me out. I read it at least ten years ago, maybe more, and I think it's the last horror book I read.
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posted
My guess is that the reason this is seen as creepy is books like that--we have trouble dissociating "human tissue" from "killed a human to get it".
And I'm even sleepier--I do think there was a mention of using human skin, but the current shirt is mouse cells. Is that still creepy to you?
posted
I don't really find this particularly creepy either. I figured that that would be a common reaction, but personally I just find this interesting more than anything else. I'm having lots of fun coming up with different ideas for these things.
Hm...if these are alive, they'll necessarily have to excrete waste, won't they? That could get kind of gross.
Or...what if they could engineer the things so that their waste products smelled good? Okay, now I've kind of grossed myself out.
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dk - that makes sense. The movie came out over ten years ago, right? I'd need to have a reason to start a horror book, and the raves about the movie might do it.
Crud. That book gave me nightmares for a week.
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posted
Oh, I got it dkw. I played around with a "shirts vs. skins" being a meaningless term pun, a "more than one way to skin a cat" pun, and several cell-based puns, but I didn't post 'em, because I was hoping to get a little non-pun discussion in before the thread went that direction.
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posted
Well, I figure since they're made of skin, they'd excrete by sweating. Since we already put up with our own sweat, I doubt many people would notice.
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posted
Ah. My apologies then. It’s really not like me to try to derail a thread with puns. I seem to be developing bad habits. Must be the company I keep.
On a serious note . . . if the intent is to develop a “leather” coat that doesn’t require killing any animals, then this relates to the “is it ethical to benefit from past unethical actions” thread. Will someone who would be against killing a mouse to make a mouse fur coat (or, lots of mouses, presumably) be able to in good conscience wear this product? It’s from an “immortal line” now, but it came from a murdered mouse originally.
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Why doesn't this count as life? It seems like the concern over animals is more often concern for cute and fuzzy animals.
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posted
Exactly. Where's the line between "I can't harm it because it's life." and "I have to get energy/warmth somehow."
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posted
Seems like it's generally a question of necessity. Do you need that fur coat? Do you need to eat _something_?
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posted
I wonder if they could grow cow skin in a culture, and then tan it and make it into leather in the usual way. Victimless, but perhaps less disturbing to those who are squicked by this coat thingy.
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posted
Did this remind anyone of Spidey's alien symbiant custome? Of course not. Because you be normal folks and I be a geek.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
As I said earlier, the trick is to engineer it so that its waste products smell good. The shirts could come in both different colors and different scents.
And hey, if it got too musky or something, you could just give it a sponge bath. Or apply an enormous roll-on thingie of deodorant.
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posted
Dkw, no problem--as I said, I thought about indulging too.
Animals have to be killed in order to harvest the cells that are cultivated into a cell line? Anybody know?
What if they were to engineer shirts that had a low level of intelligence, but really liked being worn? What if their brain chemistry was such that they felt loved and at peace with the world when they were being put to the used for which they'd been created? Imagine opening your closet door and hearing a chorus of "pick me!" "No, pick me, you haven't worn me in weeks!" "Weeks? What I wouldn't give to have been worn in weeks. When I was new he couldn't get enough of me, but now that my collar is out of style I'm lucky if he remembers to even feed me".
Ew. Well, I've gone and squicked myself out.
If you think about it though, that's basically what we've done by breeding dogs that have a compulsion to herd animals and that kind of thing. We've shaped their minds so that the things that we want to use them for are the things that they find staisfaction in.
Stray, I expect that eventually they'll do just that. I expect that they'll do the same thing with muscle tissue--I imagine big curtains of meat hanging in a storage facility, fed by IV, and cut into steak sized chunks and sold as demand dictates.
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quote:Imagine opening your closet door and hearing a chorus of "pick me!" "No, pick me, you haven't worn me in weeks!" "Weeks? What I wouldn't give to have been worn in weeks. When I was new he couldn't get enough of me, but now that my collar is out of style I'm lucky if he remembers to even feed me".
Oh my stars. As if Toy Story hasn't already made me feel horribly guilty for not seeing my teddy bear and favorite doll, my clothes need attention. *covers face*
Hey...does this mean they could hang themselves up? Because that would be really useful.
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Talk about redefining the "muscle shirt." Imagine having your shirt hold you in a nice warm grip all day. It would be like getting hugged all over. And if a hot girl walked by, you could have your shirt flex. Hey, baby!
I wonder if it would pulsate. I think a good living shirt should pulsate.
[ October 12, 2004, 01:41 PM: Message edited by: advice for robots ]
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posted
It's dead when you wear it. No waste. It dies once removed from the incubator. It's "semi-living" because it's grown from animal cells. Once removed from the "synthetic human" there's no way it can live. Think of it like leather made from peoplemice.
No, mice are not killed to make the chimeric cells.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
It's more fun to think about if it's alive while you're wearing it though.
If no animals have to be killed to create the cell line that these things are grown from, then I would think that Jains wouldn't have a problem with this technology. Not that anyone had said that they would--I'm just thinking aloud about it.
You know, exploring the idea further, if the living shirts that we've been talking about were developed, and were made so that they could tap into the wearer's system for nutrition and waste disposal and stuff--I'm imagining a lampry like mouth, or series of mouths, with painless, leech like bites--then it would be theoretically possible to create a living wet suit that would breathe for you underwater, pulling oxygen from the water and then infusing it into your blood. The thing would basically be an external, removable body organ. What an interesting idea.
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quote:Imagine having your shirt hold you in a nice warm grip all day. It would be like getting hugged all over. And if a hot girl walked by, you could have your shirt flex. Hey, baby!
I'm sorry - I'm now giggling from a quite terrifying peek into your brain.
---
*still giggling* I think it was this.
quote:Hey, baby!
My brain just gave you this enthusiastic, utterly-clueless voice, so hopeful and so cute. And a mental picture of girls running away in horror from the guy with the pulsating coat.
posted
Hmm...or what about an external organ that was just stuffed to the gills with neural tissue that was ready to be used as a secondary memory storage device. Maybe anyone wearing the organ could access the memories and skills stored in it.
Places could keep, say, a doctor organ on hand and simply allow it to attach when they needed access to medical knowledge.
Also, what about a living suit that basically functioned as a powered exoskeleton? It would be useful for people unable to move on their own because of spinal chord injuries and the like.
Of course, all of the ideas I'm having now are pretty much pure SF, only tangentally related to the little shirt growning in the flask. I'm having fun thinking of it though.
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quote: What if they were to engineer shirts that had a low level of intelligence, but really liked being worn?
Clothes like that have appeared in sf for some time. Two that come to mind are a brief mention in Vonda McEntire's novelization of STIII (or maybe it was STII?), and a novella by Anne McCaffrey called The Coelura.
I always thought they were awesome. I want clothes that hug! Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I'm not surprised, but I am surprised that I haven't come across the idea someplace. It's always frustrating when your mind goes in a direction that seems novel and interesting to you, only to find out that it's been done before.
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