[j-pb]

These microfluidic devices have the potential to be an entire biology lab on your desk. It's like a tiny robot to move droplets around, except that the actuation happens via electrostatic force instead of pipettes and grippers.

They have the added advantage of using vastly less fluids than micropipettes and are thus cheaper in their operation, additionally due to their small solid state form factor it is possible to stack millions of these in a server-room like structure with the experimentation capacity of the worlds biology / medicine grad students combined.

Also imagine this:

The year 2061 covid-60 has been spreading rapidly throughout the population thanks to cheap 30 minute point to point travel provided by SpaceX Starship.

Within a week various research organisations have provided the public with blueprints for a quick antibody test, which can be loaded onto your home microfluidic device. All you have to do is put a droplet of blood into the inlet port, and the device will synthesise the required components from a series of base consumable chemicals that can be refilled like an inkjet cartridge. Two weeks later a novel mRNA vaccine is released and available for download. Due to massive parallel production the world population is vaccinated within a week.

[javajosh]

Very cool. Now I would like you to describe "the Black Mirror scenario". That is, what is the cruelest, most despicable thing humanity can do with this tech, regardless of it's other more positive uses?

[j-pb]

Really nothing you couldn't do with run of the mill lab equipment anyways.

[ta988]

You could handle extremely dangerous material without human contact and at a really large diversity scale. So you can make a scenario where people use these to develop chemical or bio weapons.

[j-pb]

Quite the opposite. You could handle material that can be handled by any other lab equipment (that's what lab equipment is for) at minuscule scales.

People have been producing Chemical- and Bioweapons already with stuff you can essentially order on amazon. If a large drug lab decided to do nerve agents they could probably do so.

Additionally you need surprisingly large amounts of these weapons to effectively target more than a couple people.

Fear of these things causing a doomsday movie like scenario where somebody combines the common cold with ebola in their garage are like fearing 3D printed guns when you might as well buy a fully automatic rifle at the next U.S. gun shop or E.U. criminal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Chem... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks

[ta988]

You misunderstood me I said the --diversity-- was large not the amounts. Also I was talking about screening scale, not production scale (I said develop).

[abhikandoi2000]

Thanks for taking the time to explain. This is very helpful :)