Computers Will Be Built By Living Cells 253
axxackall contributes a link to Richard Black's report on BBC suggesting that "Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells such as bacteria. Scientists 'have described how wires can now be made by yeast organisms, and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges. Researchers believe these kind of technologies will be essential if we are to continue to shrink the size of electronic devices.' But 'Computers made with these natural processes are not just around the corner -- it will be many years before the technologies can be developed that far.' While scientists think about small sizes and environmental benefits, I also think if it would be possible to implant such bacteria for additional computational power in human brains -- just in case we have to upgrade them." Update: 02/17 20:23 GMT by T : I chopped out that link accidentally, sorry.
RTFA! (Score:4, Funny)
Here it is.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:RTFA! (Score:5, Funny)
Ummm... This is Slashdot you don't need to read the article to be able to post an informed opinion about it.
Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:2)
Whatever that means.
How about this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Gaia:Any of a number of theories that deal with the planet as a system.
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:3, Informative)
The OP is reffering to the Gaia Theroy, first laid out by James Lovelock at NASA. A write up is here [fsbusiness.co.uk] Executive Sumurary;
The earths ecosystem, through it's massive network of interrelationships, exhibits behaviour similar to an organisim in maintaining itself. ie; less CO2 = more UV= alge blooms = more CO2.
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:2)
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:2)
One word: MOO2 [google.com]
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:3, Funny)
Gaia is the greco-roman earth goddess. She was married to Ouranos (sky god) and gave birth to the Titans.
She also had a nice set of hooters. Gods don't marry goddesses with small boobs.
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:2)
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:4, Informative)
In this context, well, if all those "cells" of a big network have a common concience, or as a whole gains it, well, will be similar. Like a collective mind in a global scale.
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:2)
Re:Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:2, Informative)
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great... (Score:2)
Today's fortune is rather apt: Are you ever going to do the dishes? Or will you change your major to biology?
Overheard during the SAT of 2050... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Overheard during the SAT of 2050... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. Right. (Score:5, Insightful)
And just what exactly are these bacteria going to eat while they're inside your skull to build all these little computer parts? Brain tissue? Meninges? Cerebrospinal fluid? Do tell.
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd wager that they'd subside on the same nutrients from the bloodstream that everyone else does.
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:2)
Thereby starving the brain of the nutrients IT needs? No thank you.
Furthermore, so they can build wires, etc., where does the leftovers (ie.: the "crap", or "waste", if you prefer) go? I'd prefer not to have bacteria in my brainpan, thanks.
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:4, Funny)
If you're going to put bacteria into your system on purpose, perhaps the lower intestine is best suited, as it already has a complement of commensals.
Then you could do your thinking closer to where the rest of us do ;-)
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:2)
First, does your brian get starved of nutrients when you exercise? No, because at any given moment you have more oxygen and glucose in your bloodstream than you can use. You don't have one circulatory system for your brain and another for the rest of your body. Your brain takes what it needs, which is a fixed amount, your muscles take what they need, which is a variable amount. But there's enough buffering in the system that you don't start experiencing shortages until you go several days with out food or water. (Your muscles get tired when you exercise because they can't extract oxygen from the bloodstream fast enough, not because your blood starts to run out of oxygen.)
The "crap" would go back into your blood, just like the "crap" from your muscles when you use them. Again, there's enough excess capacity in the system to buffer normal fluctuations in the production of waste material.
Finally, unless you're consuming antibiotics, you already have benign bacteria living in your body, although they don't often cross the brain-blood barrier and enter the cerebellum.
Actually, yes, my brain does get starved (Score:3, Funny)
You only have enough glusoce in your system, including stored in your liver, for about two hours of intense aerobic exercise.
That's why God invented bananas. It wasn't just a dirty joke.
KFG
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:2)
1)insert bacteria into brain
2)????
3)smarts!
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:2)
I thought it was obivious, Boogers! No more nose picken for me!
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:2)
The organic material that other foreign organisms use to live and reproduce in our bodies. I think the poster envisioned brain enhancement as employing organic tissue, not little bacteria-built pentiums, so the bacteria wouldn't be hunting around your corpus for silicon and gold.
Re:Yeah. Right. (Score:2)
"Nice Hat!"
*shudders* (Score:2)
Living cells?? (Score:3, Funny)
where's the link? (Score:5, Informative)
high bandwidth [bbc.co.uk]
Flashing human brains (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Flashing human brains (Score:2)
I wonder what his thesis was about. See Dick and Jane? Curious George?
meh...Insert lame AC comment here.
Re:Flashing human brains (Score:2)
"Anyone can be president" has taken on a twisted, nightmarish reality, instead of the being an *inclusive* statement as it was originally intended to be. I am tired of the marketing of the office, the focus groups and polls that define modern office holders. I am tired of the mixing of religion and politics, and the forcing of morals on citizens. I am tired of the constant call to "The War on (fill in the blank)" that provides no change, and fills the pockets of those who have a vested interest in constant chaos. I am tired of old white men with millions and millions of dollars foisting their paternalistic attitudes on my life, all the while hiding their own indiscretions and pretending they know how it is to be a lower middle class unemployed black woman.
So, I *do* disagree with our beloved president. I also disagree with the limited number of choices helpfully provided by the two major parties, and the obstacles to real choice.
I'm sure you gathered that by now.
Re:Flashing human brains (Score:2)
Still, there is only so much you can tell about a man by how he speaks. His critics tend to point to that particular trait as representative of his overall intelligence, but I don't believe that there's an actual direct relationship between his shoddy grasp of English and his shoddy grasp of economics, foreign policy, or history. I have my own reasons for my lack of faith in the president, you see.
Re:And you *know* Bush is a moron *how*? (Score:2)
The two party system is crap, and those who think that its enough are only shorting themselves a real government.
Isn't the Earth just a big computer anyway? (Score:3, Funny)
The answer is 42. What is the question?
Re:Isn't the Earth just a big computer anyway? (Score:2)
Re:Isn't the Earth just a big computer anyway? (Score:2)
Here is the link to the story.. (Score:3, Informative)
How about a real article (Score:5, Informative)
Brain upgrades? (Score:2)
I'm all for self-hacking, but in today's environment I'm not going to trust the developers.
I can just see it now - I'm doing an advanced calculation far beyond previous human capcity, my mind BSODs (Brain Seizure Of Distraction), and my co-workers have to call my wife and ask how to reboot me.
RTF... wait, where the hell is it? (Score:2)
Really? To whom was it contributed?
Here is the full text (Score:3, Informative)
Biology to make mini machines
By Richard Black
BBC science correspondent
Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells such as bacteria.
That at least is the vision which has been outlined by scientists speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver.
They have described how wires can now be made by yeast organisms, and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges.
Researchers believe these kind of technologies will be essential if we are to continue to shrink the size of electronic devices.
Science of the small
Plants and animals produce an extraordinary variety of chemical substances, all designed to help them in their lives. But some of these substances - proteins or other kinds of molecule - might also be useful in the electronics industry, as it seeks ways of making silicon chips smaller and faster.
Another potential application is nanotechnology - science which is done at the scale of just billionths (nano) of a metre.
Materials fabricated at this level have unusual electrical and optical properties but are costly to produce. Getting the "machinery" that already exits in biological organisms to do the work has obvious advantages.
Some of the molecules that scientists are now investigating come from unlikely sources. Susan Lindquist, director of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is using yeast to produce tough wires.
"We're using a protein from yeast that is actually called yeast prion," she said.
"It resembles the prions that are responsible for mad cow disease. They form long, long fibres.
"They are very thin - just 10 nanometres in width. But they go on for thousands and thousands and thousands of nanometres in length."
Dr Lindquist has discovered how to coat these strands of prion protein in gold and silver so they conduct electricity.
Captured rays
Through genetic engineering, it should be possible to make the protein strands - and so the wires - in different shapes and configurations, perhaps even forming entire electronic components.
Another researcher speaking here, Daniel Morse from the University of California, found a number of years ago that substances developed by sea sponges could be used to make silicon-based materials.
He has now discovered that the same substances could potentially make a new generation of solar cells.
They make a material, a special kind of titanium dioxide, which is very efficient at turning the Sun's rays into electricity.
Dr Morse believes that making devices through biology rather than through factories would have other benefits, including for the environment.
Human ingenuity
He said: "Biology and bio-catalysis offers the prospects of synthesis without the recourse to toxic chemicals that are presently the basis of human manufacturing of silicon-based materials today."
Computers made with these natural processes are not just around the corner - it will be many years before the technologies can be developed that far.
But sea sponges and yeast offer us the possibility of making devices smaller, cheaper and cleaner than human ingenuity could develop on its own.
Perhaps we should not be surprised, says Susan Lindquist. After all, nature has been working on the problem for a lot longer than the human brain.
She said: "For a long time man has been harnessing horses to plough and we're just beginning to understand how to harness molecules to other kinds of purposes and just the prospect of being able to do this for the benefit of mankind is really an exciting thing."
Nanotech without building it from scratch (Score:5, Insightful)
I recall using antibody-based dyes when I was a grad student in Neuroanatomy a decade ago. One basically used cultured antibodies to attach to certain substances in tissue being examined, carrying dyes with them. Primitive compared to this, but it did use pre-existing "biotechnology"
Re:Nanotech without building it from scratch (Score:3, Insightful)
Hoo boy (Score:2, Funny)
This bacteria-ware clears up unnessesary wires and eliminates odor.
GIGER, anyone? (Score:2)
Suggestion: (Score:2)
Maybe the article didn't contain anything more than the submitter posted.
We don't need no steenkin' link!
Petition Taco to get Timothy a Holiday (Score:2)
As a concerned member of the slashdot community wishing to avoid a similar phenomena to the duplicate stories from starting I suggest that we should petition CmdrTaco to give Timothy some mandatory holidays, a weekend of rest (hmm, what might he have been doing last weekend?) being evidently not enough.
And of course, in the finest
I guess they know what they're doing... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's more probable that these computers will have additionnal traditionnal circuits in them to allow for fast computations.
okay.. not really relevant (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhh, screw that... Personally, I think as soon as we're technologically able, we should move away from the whole biology thing. Being in a meat body sucks sledgehammers thru a garden hose. Especially when you're considered lunch for pretty much everything on this earth that can move under it's own power, and several more that can't.
I mean, being a biological organism has hundreds of drawbacks, not the least of which is the extremely limited environment that such organisms must occupy if they want to keep working. Imagine a brain capable of working in temperatures ranging from sub-freezing to plus-boiling, rather than the what, twenty whole degrees we've got now? (ten if you're using Celsius). It frees up a great deal of flexibility for the design of new bodies, and the best part is, nothing naturally occuring on this earth would think we're tasty.
That said, and to get back on topic, I don't think we'll ever really see the day when bacteria are used to manufacture circuits. Trace sizes are already smaller than most living organisms, and they're difficult to work with at best. Plus, in the decade or so that they think it'll take to get this up and running, circuit requirements will be such that even engineered organisms are totally innapropriate for the task. In a few decades more, mass-produced nanoassembly should be the state of the art for this type of manufactured goods.
Re:okay.. not really relevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, build yourself your stainless steel body, go out into the wilderness, and fry a transistor, sizzle a magnet, or snap a connector. Then limp around for a few hours, days, or years waiting hopelessly for it to heal.
Organic bodies may have their hangups, but you're far more likely to survive on your own as an organic body than as any machine made by man.
Eventually, with extraordinary leaps in nanotechnology we might be able to make sufficiently self-repairing and resilient artificial machines, but by that point, we'd be getting pretty close to a biological system.
Re:okay.. not really relevant (Score:2)
And _this_, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what I'm talking about. To the point of extraordinary leaps, I don't think it's that far off. Five decades, maybe seven. Quoting Drexler (which I'm sure is going to dampen my argument), if medical science doesn't drive this, the requirements for computing will.
Furthermore, I'm not talking about stainless steel/transistor/connector type stuff. I'm talking nanomechanical/nanoelectric neuron replacment, along w/ significant changes to the skeletomuscular systems (diamondoid/corundum skeleton using interlocking carbon nanotube muscular replacements). None of the materials could even be attacked in our current environment, and would be highly resistant to acids/bases (altho not indefinitely), vacuum, high pressure (+100psi enviros). Once the problem of existing in a biological neural network is addressed, you can pitch the digestive system, endocrine, lymphatic, circulatory, liver, kidneys, pancreas... I could go on. Add to that the fact that all the raw materials needed for repair are found right at hand in the soil (well, maybe not some of the more exotic metals, but carbon and hydrogen and oxygen are.), and hell, you'd need low-level nanoassemblers to build such a thing in the first place; they'd be kept around for field repairs.
What's probably the greatest single advantage is that it's not all probablistic guesswork. Right now, the fact that all the proteins in your body do their job is because the odds are stacked in their favor. Things still break, but the odds are slim, and if they do go, there's two or more methods that have to break before you're totally screwed. In an engineered system like a car, you need less failsafes, since the odds can be stacked much higher. Assume protein systems have a failure rate of 1 in 100. Artificial mechanical systems have rates of failure approaching 1 in trillions. What's the error rate for your hard disk? And that's achieved with standard bulk matter manufacturing processes! (granted, the average is about 1 in a million, but that's still five orders of magnitude better than the biological rates, even considering a four tier backup system, each w/a 1/10^2 failure rate)
I'm probably off w/ the fail rates for biosystems, but I'm fairly sure I'm within 2 orders of magnitude.
doubly irrelevant (Score:2)
Plus, what's with the "considered lunch for pretty much everything on this earth..." comment? I mean, when's the last time ANY creature other than a human was a threat to you?
Cyborg sex? Uh... if you're into airbrushed Japanese dorm art, I guess it's appealing, but I'll take the good old fashioned organic variety any day. :-)
I'd say there's an even 50/50 chance that you're just leg-pulling with this whole "who needs biology" notion, but due to the lack of emoticonifcation, I'm left wondering.
Re:okay.. not really relevant (Score:4, Funny)
Virgin!
Re:okay.. not really relevant (Score:2)
Non-biological not much better (Score:2)
I've been working constrution for a while, and we don't work when it is colder than -20f. I personally can work in that tempature, but the equipment we use won't work. Oil gets too thick when it gets cold. Changing too a lighter grade of oil doesn't give sufficant protection. Metals also start getting brittel (depends on the metal), and plastics are even worse. Cords no longer bend.
Mind you I don't like working when in is -20, but I can bundle up and do it. The equipment I use can't handle it.
Future tech support (Score:3, Funny)
"Ummm, what are you doing to the server?"
"Why, sprinkling blood on the motherboard. The server requires a sacrifice to stay healthy and running!"
The difficult part is (Score:4, Funny)
Survival Instinct (Score:4, Funny)
Uh-huh. You go first.
Re:Survival Instinct (Score:2)
From what I understand, the average person only uses 10% of their brain. Do we really need an additional computing power? If you cannot get the average person to do even simple math without a calculator, can you really expect them to do something more intrecate just because they have a computer in their head?
Re:10% used brain (Score:2)
Re:Survival Instinct (Score:2)
The danger of biotech... (Score:2)
That has too much Randomness (Score:3, Interesting)
Great.. (Score:2, Funny)
Skynet is just around the corner.
1-5 micron (Score:2)
Re:1-5 micron (Score:2)
waaa? (Score:2)
You're not putting that in my brain!
implications for space exploration? (Score:3, Funny)
2. send Accelera-Grow (TM) Evil inc.
3.
4. sell tickets to Disneyland Mars
of course after 30 minutes of running time the movie follows by:
5. send exoskeleton-enhanced soldiers to kill all human-eating giant bacterias
Now wait this sounds familiar...
This could lead (Score:2)
Well (Score:4, Interesting)
Prof. Frink disagrees... (Score:2, Funny)
Apu: Could it be used for dating?
Prof. Frink: Well theoretically yes, but, the matches would be so perfect as to eliminate the thrill of romantic conquest.
See, he doesn't say anything about bacteria making the computers!!!
sponges? really? (Score:2)
these sponges don't happen to live in pineapples do they?
You already have enough processing power (Score:2)
You have push the *on* button.
Sheesh.
KFG
Prey (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Your "coincidence" is my "incorrect" (Score:2)
Call that "coincidence"? I dont, but you're an idiot.
Re: Your "coincidence" is my "incorrect" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
horses and other molecules... (Score:2)
She said: "For a long time man has been harnessing horses to plough and we're just beginning to understand how to harness molecules to other kinds of purposes and just the prospect of being able to do this for the benefit of mankind is really an exciting thing."
And if you get a molecule big enough, you get a blue whale. Way to go, Susan!
A New Type of Virus??? (Score:3, Funny)
So does the mean that computer viruses of the future will be known as...yeast infections?
Programming This Thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
It can be programmed!
By altering its DNA sequence, we can program a biological cell to do dammed near anything. We have the codes for Electric Eels. We have the codes for Photosynthesis. We have the codes to make light. We have the codes to make motion. And its completely recyclable! Foo, if it wears out or no longer provides and intended function, we can even feed it to the cat!
What are we waiting for, fellas! This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The Genome is source code!
Re:Programming This Thing. (Score:2)
Cool -- I'm my own personal Beowulf cluster! ;-)
Yes, so have others... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem to programming cells is that the program being run is likely very simple, but produces extremely complex results (and no, this is not my idea, but the idea of others - its most recent proponent is Stephen Wolfram - read his book "A New Kind of Science" for more info on this).
Now, I know I am going to be flamed or ridiculed by that last statement, but after having read the book, and realizing its implications (while simultaneously realizing that I will have to re-read the book many times over to truely understand it), I honestly believe that what Wolfram has done is original. True, there were many others before him - but he has managed to take the collected works, and work out a verbalized theory of what all of it means (instead of it continuing to be just a collection of individual research papers and such). Many others before him came close to that verbalization (which he acknowledges in the text), but did not continue with the thread of thought, or publish it in some manner.
If this is something that interests you, you owe it to yourself to read the book (as well as other books on such ideas as "emergence" - look up "Out of Control", the title of a good book on this phenomena). Also look up "Matrioshka Brains", "Sanger Institute: C. Elegans Project", "Singularity", and of course, "Nanotech", "Foresight Institute" - also "Hans Moravec".
Google on this information, it is *all* related. If you begin to understand it all, you should become both frightened and excited, all at the same time. You should also begin to question your own sanity, as well as the sanity of the world around you. Much of what is out there seems like it is something that borders on the "lunatic fringe", but once you really start to study it, it doesn't sound that implausible at all (especially the emergence stuff, and the way large corporations appear to act, if looked at as being emergent entity beings).
Have fun, and good luck (oh, btw, keep this in mind - if emergent behavior is a true thing - and everything points to that it is, as long as feedback loops exist - then what would you as a human do if one of your neurons suddenly became sentient, and realized that it made up a "whole" greater than the sum of the parts? Now, look on that as what happens if a human can figure out how a "corporate entity being" is "thinking" - don't you think that being would look to "exterminate" that rogue unit?)...
Re:Programming This Thing. (Score:2)
Also, as a society, we need to learn to control our behavior, including reproduction habits and industrial pollution before we start coding ourselves to be disease resistant and live forever, otherwise we'll only accelerate the destruction of the planet. (And ourselves!)
This is exactly like that Michael Crichton book (Score:5, Funny)
Man, that guy is smart.
Michael Crichton? (Score:2)
A new use for Microsoft Automatic Upgrades (Score:2)
I look forward to see the alpha release of this.
On somebody else's wetware
DNA computing (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen this before (Score:2, Interesting)
Shameless Star Trek Reference (STTR) (Score:2, Funny)
"Aaaack! The circuit is using a triaxilating frequency! Check the neural peptide levels!"
Wait a minute (Score:2)
The cool thing (Score:3, Funny)
I've still haven't forgiven myself for not patenting desktop themes and links. I'm definately not missing the boat on this one. I've already patented cell replication.
Damn, forgot to feed my PC (Score:2, Funny)
I left town for the weekend and my worthless friend forgot to feed my PC. Now over half my memory is dead and my rotting CPU is stinking up the place. I rushed it to the emergency room for a transplant, but they were unable to save my hard drive.
Those damn Biocomputer Rights fanatics got wind of it and are threatening to take away for placement in a better home. Christ, it was an accident, it's not like I've been beating the damn thing!
Anyhow, I'm now on a CPU donor waiting list. I don't know that I'll be able to afford the operation, what with the cost of the antibiotics I've already got it on. I would just buy a new one, but I can't get approved with those BCR freaks breathing down my neck. Jesus I miss cold, unfeeling silicon.
Re:Does this remind anyone... (Score:2)
Re:Does this remind anyone... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But should they (Score:2)
Re:decisions decisions (Score:2)