Inspired by the 40’s classic sci-fi novel written by A. E. van Vogt, where the Homo superior (evolved human) that could communicate through telepath and higher intelligence among themselves, and recent research by Michael Sussman in using diatoms as the material for microchips triggered the creation of artificial nails which dedicated to the ‘low-tech experiments’ with diatoms earlier on.
While we are so attached to the cyber technologies that is less than forty years in geological history, will future human evolution being shaped by human desire to stay connected? If there was an immediate mutation reacted to current cyber technologies, fingers are probably the closest anthropological contact with the cyber world. That is maybe why replacing a missing finger with an USB flash drive came into Jerry Jalava’s mind when he lost one of his fingers. S.L.A.N. project was meant to accommodate this immediate human need for microchips embedded fingernails in near future. Ultimately, genetic mortified or synthetic diatoms could be grown in underneath fingernails and structured themselves to perform certain intelligent functions. S.L.A.N. incubator was again being setup with domestic glassware in a low-tech way to demonstrate how domesticating diatoms could be. The scaffolds made of Nitrate, Phosphate, Silica, Vitamin B12, Biotin, Thiamine HCl and zinc create an environment that attracts diatoms to grow on them. However, the aqueous medium was purposely prepared with seawater sample from Brighton, UK hopefully the seawater diatoms would be cultivated. The distribution of nutrient on a scaffold shall be designed into certain pathway that eventually forms a circuit of a microchip or RFID which later on will be ‘implanted’ onto human fingers to allow one plugs into cyber world remotely which could be better illustrated in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
