Then, someday:

{cue music}
Our scene opens with 30-odd fuzzy spiders sitting on a bus-stop bench. They have on their little hardhats and have their little lunchboxes. [Joey's missus tossed in a surprise honey bee for dessert]. They are poking and making jokes, just like any other commuters on a Monday morning. “hey, who wazz dat widow I seen youz wid last night ?”- and other jovial riffs.
Yes, boys and girls, it’s another beginning of a work week for our fine high-wire workers {AFL-CIO #3343} on the new suspension bridge over the river.

Fantasy ? Perhaps… the unions are a long way from allowing spiders….

Wait, what the hell am i talking about? BRING ON THE NANOBOTS! :D
Also, bring on the steel-silk spiders. I <3 science that is done for the sake of seeing if it’s possible :P

One step closer to the nanobots that will bring about the apocalypse.

Just what we need. Webs that are even HARDER to get rid of.

In all seriousness, this is pretty cool. I don’t quite understand spider silk’s strength (I’m told it’s strong but the stick I use to destroy webs says otherwise) but it’s pretty cool that man can take something in nature and make it better. These are the discoveries that aid society… though I wonder how long it will be before we see this discover put to any practical use.

I think it’s brilliant. Although I wonder how cost efficient it is going to be if all the silk first has to be gathered (which is quite expensive) and then all of it has to be coated in metal and then wait for the reaction to take place. It’s going to be a long and tedious process, and I think that it is going to be massively expensive.

Actually a lot of interesting posts are on here. I could probably have a good conversation, but unfortunately I don’t have the time. If anyone could let me know about that, it would be appreciated.

An exciting new science is “green science”, using our ingenuity to make the world a better place and reduce our carbon footprint.

The application of silksteel to aerospace and other transport body structures is obvious and should be investigated ASAP.

There are many other applications for light-weight strong textiles that would be beneficial to all people because of basic efficiency, and not just the users.

Damn right. These Luddites need to be shipped to Africa for a few years to eek out a natural living. I guarantee the first tooth ache will do wonder for their attitude.

Fortunately it doesn’t matter, the brave have never been foiled by the weak in the long term.

-of course

Tell me, when the knife had a CONVERGENCE with the frontal lobe of your brain, did it hurt?

Carbon Nanofiber technology is already there and is cable of making extremely bulletproof vests, surgery applications, etc.

WTF Dude?

Not long ago, I was telling a friend how Native Americans, when first encountering Europeans, occasionally marveled over their attire, some believing European clothing (which was also very smelly from long sea voyages & poor bathing habits!) had been spun from spider’s silk!

THAT is a point I often have made over the years to demonstrate the issue of European demographics with Native Americans, together with greater European social & technical “complexity” during the early encountering era.

It is, of course, no longer politically correct to now acknowledge the sudden cultural-encountering problem was ever about “primitive” tribal versus “advanced” technical cultures (and since ALL peoples have generally equivalent brain capacity, of course, …without regard to perhaps some otherwise “stunted” spiritual capacities for those very complex societies–my here giving Native Americans their very necessary due, and despite their own “first encounter” issues for Europeans concerning more than occasional Native ritual cannibalism and head-hunting).

THIS disparity of “complexification,” just as the early 20th c. Catholic theologian and evolutionary scientist (perhaps a contradiction in terms to some–i am not CAtholic) Teilhard de Chardin has otherwise called this process within his book “THE PHENOMENON OF MAN,” …did, beyond anything else I believe, always spell the certain “doom” of all native cultures in North America (it is time to acknowledge this aspect once again,…while nevertheless also very necessarily acknowledging that it was all too often aided and abetted by Euro-trickery and violence, also very inevitably—a painful, very TRAGIC, but very inevitable demographic confrontation during the first encountering era).

I recall reading, years ago, how this now “newly” reported scientific breakthrough with spider’s silk was first being attempted. I have since then idly wondered just what sort of progress may have been made by efforts of “complex” science to improve on nature, to the once mistaken wonderment of early Native Americans, and now in truly creating a better spider’s thread (for fabric and other uses!).

I very oddly just wondered about it again this week, idly remarking about it to a friend, when I have not thought of this matter for quite some very long time before now. Then, oddly enough, I subsequently read of this very new breakthrough research in my local newspaper, only today…

So, ENJOY!…& follow the convergences you too always experience as well!
Stephen Squires