MONDO

FUN AND GAMES

IN THE WORLD OF

DIGITAL MATTER

COLIN
MILBURN
NANO
MONDO
NANO
Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter

COL IN MILBURN

D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S // D U R H A M A N D L O N D O N // 2 0 1 5
© 2015 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of
America on acid-​­free paper ∞
Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan
Typeset in Chaparral and Verdana
by BW&A Books, Inc.
Cover art: (top) Two avatars explore
a cell on Genome Island in Second
Life, developed by Mary Anne
Clark. Image © Colin Milburn.
(bottom) Assembling a nanocar in
NanoQuest, developed by Discover
Science & Engineering/crann.
Image courtesy of crann.
Library of Congress Cataloging-​­in-​­Publication
Data
Milburn, Colin, 1975–
Mondo nano : fun and games in the world of
digital matter / Colin Milburn.
pages cm — (Experimental futures)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5729-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5743-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-7633-0 (e-book)
1. Games and technology.
2. Nanotechnology—Social aspects.
3. Games—Social aspects.
I. Title.  II. Series: Experimental futures.
GV1201.34.M55 2015  794.8—dc23
2014031332
Contents

0000_Press Start/<1>/0001_Just for Fun/<7>/0010_Digital Matters/

<39>/0011_Tempest in a Teapot/<77>/0100_Massively Multi­p layer

Laboratories/<108>/0101_Weapons- ​­ G rade Car toons/<135>/0110_

Have Nano­s uit—​­ W ill Travel/<173>/0111_ Nano­p olitanism/<201>/

1000_My Little Avatar/<236>/1001_Game Over—​­

Play Again?/<293>/

Acknowledgments/<301>/Notes/<305>/Bibliography/<349>/Index/<399>/
0000 Press Start

It’s fun to play with atoms. At least, this is the message of a short film
called A Boy and His Atom, created in 2013 by a team of scientists at the
ibm Almaden Research Center in California. Working together with pro-
fessional animators and designers, the scientists used the tools and tech-
niques of nano­­­tech­nol­ogy to produce a motion picture at the atomic scale.
Lauded by Guinness World Records as “The World’s Smallest Stop-​­Motion
Film,” A Boy and His Atom represents the frame-​­by-​­frame animation of
individual carbon monoxide molecules. With the help of their scanning
tunneling microscopes, the scientists maneuvered these molecules into
discrete, pointillistic images on a copper surface. The images were then
assembled in sequence to tell a story—​­a little bit of fiction made from lit-
tle bits of matter.
It is a simple tale, minimalist and monochromatic, about an atom that
breaks away from a larger stripe of material. The atom sets off on a jour-
ney. Bounding along, it encounters a young boy. The boy and the atom
share an instant bond and become fast friends. They dance together, mim-
icking each other’s movements (fig. 0.1). The boy tosses the atom in the air
and bounces it against a wall. The atom suddenly flattens on the ground,
becoming a trampoline. The boy, surprised, gingerly probes the trampo-
line with his heel. Discovering its resilience, he begins to bounce on the
flattened atom with glee. The atom then reverts to its original form, rest-
ing in the boy’s hand for a moment before shooting into the sky, soaring
beyond the clouds. It bursts apart, an explosion of particles that briefly
coalesce into the word “Think” (the ibm corporate motto) before morph-
ing into the ibm logo itself.
0.1. A Boy and His Atom. ibm Corporation, 2013. The film features microscopic
images created by Andreas Heinrich, Christopher Lutz, Ileana Rau, and Susanne
Baumann at the ibm Almaden Research Center. It was directed by Nico Casa­
vecchia of 1stAveMachine, developed in collaboration with the Ogilvy and Mather
advertising agency and the Punga.tv animation studio.

While the narrative is quite spare, it burgeons with meaning. For the
film presents an allegory of technoscientific innovation, depicting the
manipulation of atoms as a childlike process of speculation and play, fun
and games. The boy, testing the capacities of the atom, discovers its mal-
leability and its potential to take on new forms. The tiny mote is remade
into a variety of toys: a ball, a trampoline, even something like a model
rocket. Playing with the atom affords inspiration, an uplifting surge of
wonder and delight; as the atom flies into the heavens, it is as if the boy’s
imagination itself were floating toward new realms of possibility. The
sky’s the limit, it seems—​­or just the beginning.
According to Christopher Lutz, one of the researchers who worked on
the film, galvanizing the imagination in this manner is crucial for the
development of new technologies: “We can’t know in detail what those
future technologies will be. But we can lay the scientific groundwork for
them. And we can spur our own imaginations, and get a head start in ex-
ploring these new worlds.”1 If we detect a note of science fiction here, it
is no mistake. At the same time as they were making A Boy and His Atom,
the ibm scientists also made another short movie out of atoms: a fleet-
ing animation of the Star Trek logo. They also made a set of atomic images

2  0000
inspired by other Star Trek icons, namely, the starship Enterprise and the
Vulcan “live long and prosper” salute. These images were designed to
tie in with the release of the film Star Trek: Into Darkness, and they fea-
tured in the official smartphone app for the movie. Andreas Heinrich,
the principal investigator for these creative exercises in scanning probe
microscopy, among other experimental programs at ibm Almaden, has
suggested some parallels between the crew of the Enterprise and his own
research team: “Their claim to fame is that they’re dealing with the final
frontier, with space. What we’re doing is dealing with the final frontier
of engineering. The finest thing you’ll ever deal with in engineering is at-
oms. There’s nothing beyond that point. . . . So, we’re dealing with the fi-
nal frontier of small, and they’re dealing with the final frontier of large.”2
A sense of scientific adventure and enjoyment certainly comes to light in
the images and animations, which the ibm research division calls “science
fiction at the atomic level.”3
Nico Casavecchia, the director of A Boy and His Atom, has likewise de-
scribed the atmosphere of playful speculation that surrounded the film’s
production: “It was hardcore, the nerdiest project I’ve ever participated
in.”4 To be sure, a nerdy and playful attitude materializes even in the aes-
thetic dimensions of the film, its visual design and soundtrack, which re-
hearse the storytelling traditions of early video games. As Casavecchia
explains, “We had to create a film using no more than 5,000 movements
of single atoms, which was a huge limitation for the character design. . . .
Once we knew the rules of the game we started thinking about stories
that could be told within those boundaries. . . . Our objective was to tell
something using such small amount of pixels and a single color. This led
us to research 8bits video games from the 80s, that told amazing stories
with such limited resources, like a space battle with only a small amount
of pixels.”5 Making the film was itself something of a game, it seems,
turning material constraints into features and improvising within the
established rules, the parameters of the scientific instruments, and the
available time frame. The scientists and the artists had to learn these
“rules of the game” together, guided by the representational conventions
of computer games. The pixelated narrative of the film actually makes a
couple of references to such conventions. For example, the sound effects
that accentuate the bouncing of the atom, as well as the image of the boy
lobbing the atom against the edge of the video frame, charmingly recall
the arcade game Pong and its brethren.

P R E S S S T A R T 3
 The film is an invitation, an alluring spectacle aimed at recruiting
young people into the exciting fields of molecular science and innova-
tion. As Heinrich has said, “If I can do this by making a movie and I can
get a thousand kids to join science rather than go into law school, I’d be
super happy.”6 ibm also promoted the film in conjunction with a series
of public outreach events and educational workshops: a coordinated ef-
fort to inspire children all over the world to see themselves, their future
selves, in this adorable fable of pleasure, friendship, and hope at the bot-
tom of materiality.
It is an advertisement for the advancement of nano­­tech­nol­ogy that also
highlights specific feats of ibm research. The climactic, atomistic image
of the ibm logo, for instance, recollects the significant role that ibm has
played in the history of nano­­tech­nol­ogy, and probe microscopy in partic-
ular. The scanning tunneling microscope, or stm , was actually invented
by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer in 1981 at the ibm Zurich Research
Laboratory—​­an achievement for which they received the Nobel Prize. But
this particulate logo more specifically alludes to the experiment that Don
Eigler and Erhard Schweizer performed in 1989 at ibm Almaden, using an
stm to write the letters “ibm” with xenon atoms—​­demonstrating a new
technical ability to control the positions of individual atoms. Even the fun-​
­loving boy evokes the legacy of such experiments at ibm , for he looks to be
a descendant of the “molecular man” created by Peter Zeppenfeld and Don
Eigler in 1991, using the same techniques (fig. 0.2).
Symbolically incorporating this longer history of nano­­tech­nol­ogy, the
stop-​­motion movie implies that it has all been heading toward a future
of extreme computation and digital technologies refined to infinitesimal
proportions. At the beginning of the story, the wayward atom separates
from a stripe of material, which represents the twelve-​­atom magnetic
memory bit created by Heinrich and his colleagues in 2011—​­the small-
est magnetic storage device ever made. The filmic narrative begins, then,
by rendering visible the experimental limits of digital media—​­or what
would appear to be the limits right now, anyway.7
As the prefatory sequence of the film explains, “At ibm Research, we
move atoms to explore the limits of data storage. To explore the limits of
filmmaking, we created the world’s smallest movie. It was made by moving
actual atoms, frame by frame.” The film indexes a scientific drive toward
the final frontier of computation and data storage, information technolo-
gies reduced to the atomic scale. Heinrich has also emphasized this theme:

4  0000
0.2. Carbon Monoxide Man (a.k.a. “Molecular Man”). Peter Zeppenfeld and Don
Eigler, 1991. Zeppenfeld used an stm to arrange carbon monoxide molecules
on a platinum surface—​­apparently just for fun: “[Zeppenfeld] was known to go
through playful moods, leaving behind a series of images in the lab notebooks,
none of which were serious in nature” (Eigler, “Atomilism”). Nevertheless, this
experiment was published in a peer-​­reviewed technical journal as serious science:
“The results presented above [e.g. ‘molecular man’ and others] demonstrate that
molecules and even metal atoms can be positioned and arranged into rudimen-
tary structures of our own design” (Zeppenfeld, Lutz, and Eigler, “Manipulating
Atoms and Molecules with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope,” 133). Image origi-
nally created by ibm Corporation.

“As data creation and consumption continue to get bigger, data storage
needs to get smaller, all the way down to the atomic level. We’re applying
the same techniques used to come up with new computing architectures
and alternative ways to store data to making this movie.”8 Bodying forth
these techniques, the film turns out to address the society of ubiquitous
computing, the desire for more and more information—in other words,
the digitization of everything. As the adventurous atom dislocates itself
from the magnetic memory bit, eventually springing into the boy’s hand,
it signals the potential of nano­­tech­nol­ogy to put all data and all knowledge
right at our fingertips. Or as Heinrich puts it, “You could carry around not

P R E S S S T A R T 5
just, you know, two movies on your iPhone or something, you could carry
around any movie that was ever produced, basically.”9
A Boy and His Atom depicts the convergence of the molecular sciences
with information technologies, staged as high-​­tech entertainment. It fig-
0
ures technical research at the nano­­scale—​­the domain of individual at-
oms and molecules—​­as a form of play. It suggests that having a good
time with the fundamental building blocks of matter opens up strange
and wonderful new vistas of technoscientific possibility. And yet it is not
merely propaganda, for it more or less captures the extent to which the
research methods of nano­­tech­nol­ogy and related fields are actually blend-
ing with the practices and dispositions of gaming, the fictions and fanta-
sies of digital culture. Indeed, that’s what this book is all about.
I would like to take you on a fantastic voyage: an exploration of the
border zone between laboratory experiments and electronic narratives,
cutting-​­edge innovations and recreational pleasures. Together we will
discover a new world emerging at the intersection of the molecular sci-
ences and popular media, a wild and wacky world shaped by the playful
speculations of scientists, geeks, and gamers. Welcome to mondo nano.
Tracing the metaphor of “digital matter” that characterizes the most
radical promises of nano­­tech­nol­ogy, we will venture into a number of
places where the dream of a completely programmable world is already
being made into a lived experience, an everyday reality. Our journey will
take us all over the planet, hopping between university labs, startup com-
panies, military institutions, and massively multiplayer online games.
This book is about the research agendas, experimental systems, and labo-
ratory instruments of the molecular sciences that are changing in relation
to games and other forms of imaginative play. It is also about the ways in
which games and cultural fictions of all kinds have taken on new repre-
sentational concerns in response to high-​­tech research at the nano­­scale.
Altogether, it offers a seriocomical account of the deep entanglements of
science and innovation in the media ecologies of globalization. It’s science
studies meets media studies—​­all in good fun. So let’s have some fun.
Whenever you are ready, just press the start button.

6  0000
Notes

0000. Press Start

1. Lutz interviewed in the documentary video Moving Atoms: Making the

World’s Smallest Movie (ibm Corporation, 2013).
2. Heinrich quoted in Graeme McMillan, “The Star Trek Fan Art That ibm
Scientists Created out of Atoms,” Wired, May 7, 2013, http://www​.wired​.com/
underwire/2013/05/star-​­trek-​­art-​­atoms-​­ibm/.
3. ibm Research, “A Boy and His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie,” ibm
Research: Articles, 2013, http://www​.research.ibm​.com/articles/madewithatoms​
.shtml.
4. Casavecchia quoted in Ann-​­Christine Diaz, “How ibm Made a Movie
out of 5,000 Atoms,” Advertising Age, May 3, 2013, http://adage​.com/article/
agency-​­news/ibm-​­made-​­a-​­movie-​­5-​­000-​­atoms/241271/.
5. Casavecchia, “A Boy and His Atom—​­The World’s Smallest Movie,” Vimeo,
May 1, 2013, http://vimeo​.com/65244953.
6. Heinrich interviewed in Moving Atoms.
7. Made from twelve iron atoms, the memory bit exhibited stable magnetic
states only at very low temperatures. See Loth et al., “Bistability in Atomic-​
­Scale Antiferromagnets.”
8. Heinrich quoted in Ari Entin, “ibm Research Makes World’s Smallest
Movie Using Atoms: Future Storage Systems Based on Atomic-​­Scale Memory
Would Be Capable of Storing Massive Amounts of Big Data,” ibm News Room,
May 1, 2013, http://www-​­03.ibm​.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40970.wss.
9. Heinrich interviewed in Moving Atoms.

0001. Just for Fun

1. See Regis, Nano; Milburn, Nanovision; and Toumey, “Reading Feynman

into Nano­tech­nol­ogy.”
2. Paul Schlichta quoted in Regis, Nano, 65. At the time, Schlichta was one of
Feynman’s graduate students at Caltech.