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Computers Will Be Built By Living Cells 253

Posted by timothy from the creative-computing dept.
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.
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Computers Will Be Built By Living Cells More

Computers Will Be Built By Living Cells

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  • RTFA! (Score:4, Funny)

    by imadork ( 226897 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:59PM (#5321011) Homepage
    Only I can't, 'cause there's no link....

  • Ecological friendly biological computers? (Score:3, Funny)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:00PM (#5321014) Homepage Journal
    Put them in a planetary network and we well be real close to Gaia

  • Great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by FCAdcock ( 531678 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:00PM (#5321018) Homepage Journal
    Another excuse not to do the dishes. I can just say I'm waiting for them to start making computers...
    • Another excuse not to do the dishes. I can just say I'm waiting for them to start making computers...

      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)

    by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:01PM (#5321026) Journal
    Billy Joe! You overclocked your brain didn't you? Don't bother denying it young man, I see the steam coming out of your ears!

  • Yeah. Right. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superdan2k ( 135614 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:01PM (#5321027) Homepage Journal
    "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."

    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)

      by Planesdragon ( 210349 )
      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.

      I'd wager that they'd subside on the same nutrients from the bloodstream that everyone else does.
      • I'd wager that they'd subside on the same nutrients from the bloodstream that everyone else does.

        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)

          by Simon Field ( 563434 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:20PM (#5321159) Homepage


          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 ;-)

        • Jeez, I just spent all my moderator points this morning, then I saw your posts. Let me see if I can explain this in words small enough for you to understand.

          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.

          • That's what is refered to as 'bonk' by endurance athletes. Bonk isn't when the muscles run out of fuel, that's just getting tired. Bonk is when the muscles have consumed so much glucose the brain begins to starve.

            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
    • In short:
      1)insert bacteria into brain
      2)????
      3)smarts!
    • I have a better idea! Why don't we use unassigned nerve cells to do our wiring? They tend to be more friendly to nervous tissue, they can have the same genetic material as the rest of your brain (with adult stem cells), they are already used to create circuits, and we know a lot [cord.ubc.ca] more about the behavior of nerve cells in forming functional circuits, as opposed to using bacteria or some other non-animal cell source. I personally trust my own cells more than a foreign organism in EVERY circumstance.

    • I thought it was obivious, Boogers! No more nose picken for me!

    • 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.

      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.

    • No kidding. Remember the size of computers of the 70's? And those were friggen calculators. Adding anything really useful to our brains would probably be a comparable size.

      "Nice Hat!"
  • *shudders* at the thought of implanting bacterias in the brain.

  • Living cells?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by PetWolverine ( 638111 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:02PM (#5321035) Journal
    Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells
    ...such as cells of <gasp> humans, like the trillions of human cells it took to build the first computers out of vacuum tubes?

  • where's the link? (Score:5, Informative)

    by lylonius ( 20917 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:04PM (#5321048)
    low bandwidth [bbc.co.uk]

    high bandwidth [bbc.co.uk]

  • Flashing human brains (Score:3, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:05PM (#5321052) Journal
    I can think of a President of the United States who could use a brain flash. Upgrade him out of the alpha release [bushisms.com] he's currently using.

  • Isn't the Earth just a big computer anyway? (Score:3, Funny)

    by opusbuddy ( 164089 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:05PM (#5321053) Homepage

    The answer is 42. What is the question?

  • How about a real article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Target Drone ( 546651 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:07PM (#5321069)
    I can't find the article on BBC but United Press has one here [upi.com]
  • 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."

    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.

  • ...contributes a link to Richard Black's report...

    Really? To whom was it contributed?

  • Here is the full text (Score:3, Informative)

    by vivek7006 ( 585218 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:10PM (#5321091) Homepage
    Friday, 14 February, 2003, 23:32 GMT
    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)

    by Badgerman ( 19207 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:10PM (#5321095)
    This article brings up the quest for nanontech- we've got plenty of functional "nanotechnology" right now in the form of living cells. Maybe its a good idea to see what they can do before reinventing the wheel.

    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"

    • The problem with using preexisting nanotechnology is that we had absolutely no say in its function and design. It is a bit of a mess just figuring out what enzymes do; much less running experiments on their structures, mechanisms, and (gulp) their original design process. It would be nice to be able to peice together catalytic pathways on a whim but we have very limited experience doing that. Perhaps when we have quantum computers and rapid nucleotide assemblers we can perform evolution in a test tube to design our own proteinaeous nanomachines. So far, we have to take (very small) bits and pieces from nature and use them as best we can.

  • Hoo boy (Score:2, Funny)

    by redgopher ( 650527 )
    Yeast Infection v2.0, coming soon to a bacteria retailer near you...
    This bacteria-ware clears up unnessesary wires and eliminates odor.
  • Reminds me of H.R. Giger [hrgiger.com] stuff, oh the possibilities!
  • I move that timothy be the first human subject to undergo the proposed revolutionary procedure.

    Maybe the article didn't contain anything more than the submitter posted.

    We don't need no steenkin' link!
    • It's only monday and already Timothy posted two stories with a missing link.

      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 /. tradition I am just pointing out what the rest of the /. community should do but I don't intend to do anything about it myself except ranting in this post, do as I write, not as I do ;)
  • ... but a bio computer is going to be very slow at computations. This is because chemical phenomena are intrisically slow. So they might be better at AI or Shape Recognition, but they won't replace usual computers for any computing task.

    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)

    by netwiz ( 33291 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:17PM (#5321139) Homepage
    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."

    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.
    • 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.

      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.
      • 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.

        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.
    • I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you've never been an athlete, or pushed your body to extremes in order to overcome a challenge. I know, I know, it doesn't fit the geek credo, but using your body for more than just punching keys and moving joysticks (he said "joysticks") can be fun, you know.

      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)

      by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:43PM (#5321620) Homepage Journal
      Being in a meat body sucks

      Virgin!
      ;- )
    • A mix of the best of both worlds would be the ideal solution. Engineer our DNA to produce metal skin to survive temperature extremes, greater mental capacities, etc.

    • 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)

    by Mu*puppy ( 464254 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:20PM (#5321154)
    If you think you get funny looks NOW-

    "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)

    by Zapdos ( 70654 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:20PM (#5321155)
    Getting the really small clean rooms and equipment for the bacteria to use.

  • Survival Instinct (Score:4, Funny)

    by Psion ( 2244 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:21PM (#5321164)
    "I also think if it would be possible to implant such bacteria for additional computational power in human brains"

    Uh-huh. You go first.

    • 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?

    • I, for one, welcome our new pathogenic overlords.
  • ...and you thought a virus made your computer act strange now.... just wait!

  • That has too much Randomness (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Khalidz0r ( 607171 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:23PM (#5321179) Journal
    The most important factor that makes computers (machines) work is the randomlessness they have. It is even hard (or almost impossible) to build a really random number using a computer. On the other hand, living cells of any kind have much higher randomness, would they really be able to control how large this random factor is?

  • Great.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    Skynet is just around the corner.
  • Bacterial cells are around 1-5 micron in length. This means that we can not employ our current state of miniturization with living elements that we currently enjoy. Interesting concept though. I guess there can be some uses for growing our circuits in flasks.
  • "It resembles the prions that are responsible for mad cow disease. They form long, long fibres."

    You're not putting that in my brain!

  • implications for space exploration? (Score:3, Funny)

    by newsdee ( 629448 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:40PM (#5321285) Homepage Journal
    1. send vial of stuff to Mars
    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... :-)

  • to a great democratizing of the hardware business, much as Open Source has done for software.

  • Well (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShooterNeo ( 555040 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:51PM (#5321344)
    Well, this isn't a new idea. But there's problems with it. The biggest is that the existing living computing cells we have to work with are very, very slow. Yes, they work in parallel and may actually do calculations using electrons at a quantum level. We should be able to duplicate this at some point with more conventional techniques, though. Also, while there would seem like living cells would have a cost and efficiency advantage, our current techniques for building microchips are themselves rather efficient. Lithography is somewhat similar to xeroxing endless copies based on a template. Most of the cost and complexity is involved in quality control, design, and contaiminant management....which wouldn't go away if we used neurons.
  • Prof. Frink(past): Sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings of Europe can own one.

    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!!!
  • and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges

    these sponges don't happen to live in pineapples do they?
  • in your brain.

    You have push the *on* button.

    Sheesh.

    KFG

  • Prey (Score:3, Informative)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <dmorin@@@gmail...com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:00PM (#5321382) Homepage Journal
    For those that are interested, Michael Crichton's new book "Prey" uses this idea as a significant plot point. I'm not plugging the book one way or another, it just happens that I listened to that section this morning on the treadmill and I'm a firm believer in encouraging such cosmic coincidency thingies.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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."

    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)

    by Jim_Hawkins ( 649847 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:26PM (#5321519)
    "Scientists have described how wires can now be made by yeast organisms..."

    So does the mean that computer viruses of the future will be known as...yeast infections?

  • Programming This Thing. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by anubi ( 640541 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:58PM (#5321705) Journal
    Have you noticed the cell itself is a computer?

    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!

    • Have you noticed the cell itself is a computer?

      Cool -- I'm my own personal Beowulf cluster! ;-)

    • Yes, so have others... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:33PM (#5322206) Homepage
      DNA and RNA work together, performing essentially the same function as a Turing machine, where the base pairs form instructions to that machine. You are right in saying that the genome is source code, and that technically, cells can be programmed, but we are a long way away from being able to program them.

      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?)...

  • This is exactly like that Michael Crichton book (Score:5, Funny)

    by scotay ( 195240 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @06:13PM (#5321784)
    You know the one with the smart gorillas that are protecting the diamond mine. Except the gorillas are really tiny sea sponges making solar panels. That, and there are no diamonds.

    Man, that guy is smart.
  • This sounds familiar to the premise behind Michael Crichtons latest book Prey.
  • Imagine the convenience of letting Microsoft upgrade not only your computer, but your brain.

    I look forward to see the alpha release of this.

    On somebody else's wetware

  • DNA computing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by topologist ( 644470 )
    I'm surprised DNA Computing [arstechnica.com] doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the discussion. It's still in its infancy, but I think it shows great potential, especially for parallelizable computations.
  • When I was a kid i read an Ironman comic where he was using bacteria to make the computer chips for the suit. This was at least 15 yrs ago so the idea for this kind of technology has been around for a long time.
  • This will one day give me the chance to quote star trek, without non-trekkies thinking I'm on crack.

    "Aaaack! The circuit is using a triaxilating frequency! Check the neural peptide levels!"
  • Before we all go rushing off into a discussion about how much more powerful and smaller computer will be in the future, perhaps we should start discussing who will need such systems. It's fine and dandy to come up with a way to build 60 GHZ processors but who would be willing to buy such a CPU? How much computing power do we need before we get into the realm of the uneconomical and overkill? Do we really need to spend $1000 on a CPU when a $100 model that is only a quater of the speed would be sufficient.

  • The cool thing (Score:3, Funny)

    by eniu!uine ( 317250 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:55PM (#5322308)
    is that there won't be any more confusion about computer viruses.. they'll be just like any other viri.

    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.

  • 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.

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