I should probably apologize in advance. This is going to be another philosophical screed about the nature of technology itself. This is partly because the only tech news of any interest to day is more like farce. The poor astronauts of Boeing Starliner are going to have to come back some other way than the broken and dangerous Starliner itself but it's going to take until probably February next year to arrange seats and spacesuits for them since the suits they went up in don't work with SpaceX equipment¹.

This is the problem with writing humor. How can you top the craziness of real life?

Well, how about this: What can you make by blowing bubbles? If you're thinking shaving cream² forget it. Nice try, but no.

I was thinking something a little more interesting. How about a fishing net? Sound far fetched? Actually, it's been known for a long time that humpback whales use bubbles to "herd" their prey into a small area to make it easier to eat lots of them in a single go. Recent research shows that they don't just make "nets" out of bubbles but they have considerable control over the size, shape and density of the structure.

A structure made of bubbles! My mind keeps demanding to know, how is that not shaving cream? I guess because it's more of a fence than an indiscriminate mass. And it won't help you at all when shaving. The paper, Solitary humpback whales manufacture bubble-nets as tools to increase prey intake, is interesting more because of the way the researchers think about these bubble-nets and the whales that make them than for the actually smart and interesting tech they used to study the nets (They used drones and an echo sounder). They classify the net as a kind of tool.

Again, my mind is boggled. A tool made of bubbles! But I'm learning from this too. Think about it. Whales don't have thumbs. They don't even have paws to manipulate their environment with. Something as simple as picking up a rock to break open a shell, something that sea otters do routinely, is completely beyond a whale. So they aren't going to be pulling up kelp to use for weaving nets. They have to be more creative.

Whales do have blowholes. They can make bubbles as fast or slow, as big or small as they like. The nets they make from those bubbles are surprisingly intricate. They have multiple layers, with inner ones being smaller than outer ones creating a sort of funnel effect. Humpbacks are what are called lunge feeders, meaning they open their mouths and swim really fast through schools of the fish they want to eat. Then, once they have a mouthful (or come out the other side of the school), they can close their mouths and slow down until the next lunge. The net groups the prey more tightly together, meaning that they get more fish per lunge than if they don't use the net.

Being bubbles, the net disappears fast. They didn't describe how fast in the paper. I expect the whales only get one lunge per net. Then it breaks up as if it had never been. That's part of what impresses me about this "tool." It's a one-use tool that simply ceases to exist. If you didn't live in the water, you would probably never think of such a thing.

So here's the central question. Is it really a tool? Before you say, "Yes, of course" let me ask another one: Is a bird's nest a tool? It's a thing birds make and it serves a purpose. But we don't think of it as a tool anymore than we think of our houses as tools. The Whales and bubble nets paper has a paragraph with a not very good discussion of what makes a tool. The conclusion seems to be that a tool is a thing you make that you can carry around and do stuff with, because you want it. Yeah, I'm paraphrasing but that's actually pretty close.

That definition excludes things like steam rollers and heavy artillery. Maybe it's not a definition we want to use over the long term. Maybe it's good enough when you're talking about birds and whales. But just as in the case of a bird's nest, someone will ask the perfectly reasonable question, are the whales making those nets out of bubbles because they thought it would be a good idea, or is it instinctive behavior?

The difference matters. Because when you talk about tools you're also talking about thinking and even creativity. The definition of a tool should probably include something about a thing you make for a reason, not because that's what genes and hormones told you to do. Shouldn't it?

A while back, I made the claim that all technology is used for making more technology. Like the way a hammer, which is about the most basic tool imaginable, can be used with some wood and nails to make a saw horse. And a saw horse can then be used as part of a structure for making even more complicated things. See? It all builds to bigger and more complicated stuff.

But I never thought of bubble nets.

That's why I raised the question about instinct. If bubble nets are instinctive, then they aren't technology and I don't have to change my definition of what tech is. You can still call them a tool if you like, just not a technological one. But if they are the product of intelligent thought, then the definition definitely needs redefined. And what if it's both? Like if birds were super intelligent, they would probably still build nests (because it's instinctive) but they would be high tech nests. How do you tell what's going on then?

It could, conceivably, be that it's instinctive for humpback whales to blow bubbles to help them catch fish but they also make these complicated nets because they learned that it works. They might have even even experimented with different designs for different types of prey or different water conditions. That would make it a specialized tool, not a general purpose one. That sounds kind of techy to me. But how can we tell if that’s what they’re doing?

Don’t look at me. I don’t know!

Now that I've given myself a headache, I'm going to stop writing and go read about whales for a while. Have a nice weekend.

Here's that prompt: "A smooth-skinned humpback whale underwater, blowing bubbles from its blowhole, which form a circular pattern around it. The whale is large, with long, streamlined pectoral fins, and its skin appears smooth. Nearby, a group of excited scientists in scuba gear observe the whale closely, their eyes wide with amazement. Some scientists are taking notes on waterproof pads, while others are pointing at the bubbles. The underwater environment is clear, with beams of sunlight filtering through the water, illuminating the scene and adding a sense of wonder. The background features a deep blue ocean with some distant marine life and faint outlines of the ocean floor."

This was my third attempt to get an image of a whale blowing bubbles. Dall-e-3 appeared to be completely unable to get the concept.