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Computers Will Be Built By Living Cells
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.
Only I can't, 'cause there's no link....
Put them in a planetary network and we well be real close to Gaia
... will get a completely new meaning.
Come on,that one was mandatory.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Another excuse not to do the dishes. I can just say I'm waiting for them to start making computers...
--Forest C. Adcock--
If my computer starts slowing down, will my CD-ROM accept a slice of ham for my PC to eat up to gain its strength back?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
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!
"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.
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*shudders* at the thought of implanting bacterias in the brain.
My smelly sneakers can now become manufacturers of high-tech componentry!! Who'd have thought.
Yes, but even though computers can be made from cells and other biological materials, doesn't mean that performance will be better than current production materials.
Cool that we can do this, but practical?
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Perhaps these bacteria were so tired from making wires, that they lacked the energy to post the link.
brain damage Vs a yeast infection of the obdula oblongata
Dude, where's the link???
No sig
low bandwidth
high bandwidth
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 can think of a President of the United States who could use a brain flash. Upgrade him out of the alpha release he's currently using.
The answer is 42. What is the question?
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2003/ denver_2003/2765077.stm
But how do you do quality control? and measure for OSHA related work injuries? Unitl we have amoeba that can fill out paperwork, this is just a novelty.
They're SOLD by 'em too!
:-P
hehe
i wonder what will happen when you smoke pot in front of the computer...will it die?
I can't find the article on BBC but United Press has one here
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.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Really? To whom was it contributed?
In short:
1)insert bacteria into brain
2)????
3)smarts!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Biology to make mini machines
Gives new meaning to the term shit for brains I guess.
You'll be killed by the transhumanists. Shouldn't you be worshiping your "god" about now?
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."
I just hope the machines don't get all uppity and decide to convert a human being into this.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
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 Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
is viruses! 'virii' is a stinking neologism that has to be eradicated!
Yeast Infection v2.0, coming soon to a bacteria retailer near you...
This bacteria-ware clears up unnessesary wires and eliminates odor.
Insert clever one liner here.
Does this remind anyone of the book Prey by Michael Crichton? *listens to wolves howl*
Reminds me of H.R. Giger 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!
...
Suddenly we find out that 60% of bacterial computer manufacturing has been outsourced to India and China.
http://dtum.livejournal.com
I already have one of these computers made of living cells. Too bad links haven't evolved yet though.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Maybe the same glucose these guys eat.
Fuel cells on the brain?
Free book: Science Toys You Can Make
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.
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... 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.
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
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.
Do not post the link. Should have figured this out before the "Abandoned & Little Used Airfields" story..
Get a free ipod.
i cant believe this idiot had to mention 'brain-augmentation'... so much for an intelligent discussion. i would like to see one of those on slashdot one day.
sometimes, i like to masturbate in my own poop!
{HOMER}MMMMmmmmm, brain upgrades....{/HOMER}
I just want an ethernet port, in the back of my skull...
Not everyone deserves a 320i
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!"
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
Getting the really small clean rooms and equipment for the bacteria to use.
Get a free ipod.
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 ;-)
Free book: Science Toys You Can Make
...tech anyone? i think this is pretty much a rephrasing of molectronics and nanotech as described by Drexler in "Engines of Creation", basically saying that tiny machines would create the tech of the future, and bacteria are nothing more than tiny machines...
"I also think if it would be possible to implant such bacteria for additional computational power in human brains"
Uh-huh. You go first.
Why do leftists always paint Republican presidents as dumb? That was old and incorrect back in Eisenhower's day.
Who really wants smart presidents anyway? They might think they could do something like solve the conflict in the Middle East with a "peace process" (whatever the fuck that is...) or even think they could talk a murderous, Stalinist regime out of producing nuclear weapons only to have that regime pop up later saying "HA HA! FOOLED YOU! SOMEONE SET US UP THE BOMB!!! NOW WE HAVE IT!! WOOT!"
And how smart is someone who doesn't know what "is" means, anyway?
...and you thought a virus made your computer act strange now.... just wait!
NO CARRIER
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?
"What you 'seek' is what you get!"
Then they will install Palladium and you can only think thoughts you have paid for.
To me the smart thing to implant those bacteria in are the computers/machines/whatever they produce in the first place. Think about it. Your machine breaks. You throw in some "food" for the bacteria and it repairs the problem.
Skynet is just around the corner.
Trolling is a art,
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!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
I also think if it would be possible to implant such bacteria for additional computational power in human brains
Forget brains, this human has a faux-Cray YMP in his underwear. Granted most of the computational power is in the back but that's a topic for another post.
Trolling is a art,
The theory that microorganisms will manufacture goods that are usful for humans are not foreign, there is a whole industry based on it today.
More interesting, people talk of the future being nanomachines but in reality our bodies and cells are already doing what nanomachines are said to be able to do. What other machine can take organic material and light and make usable energy in the form of ATP.
Think about production of alternative fuels, there is already reseach in having bacteria producing hydrogen fuels in the from an enzyme called hydrogenase.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/w7241e/w7241e0g.htm
There is even talk of having fossil fuels being produced by bacteria. After all, fossils fuels where originally produced by bacteria millions of years ago.
Why do you think I want Al Gore or Clinton in the White House? I said no such thing.
Oh. Maybe you've bought into the 'two party system', because you're a moron too?
Don't worry Jeb, you qualify for brain flashing, just like the rest of your inbred family. :)
So Michael Crighton is a prophet after all.
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 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.
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...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
No need to upgrade these monsters! Just throw in some more food, and it will overclock automaticly!
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
I never wash myself!
I'm "producing" a solar panel even as I write this...
I have to wonder if they have thought about the biological risks of this sort of thing. What if a manufacturing process goes awry, spreading toxic bacteria?
At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, accidents in this area could be the next generation of pollution (analogous to today's oil spills, nuclear meltdowns, etc.).
to a great democratizing of the hardware business, much as Open Source has done for software.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
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!!!
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
and how solar panels could be built using substances produced by sea sponges
these sponges don't happen to live in pineapples do they?
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
in your brain.
You have push the *on* button.
Sheesh.
KFG
... how sheep's bladders may be used to prevent earthquakes.
-_-_-
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
spelling and grammer checker could come in handy.
KFG
Brings new meaning to the term "Kill active process."
The human brain is full of redundancy. You might call it mission critical. Not in the sense that, "Oh, no, my company will lose .. Suzy, get me those financial figures. This is great! We can cook the books!"
If the human brain goes down, you go with it.
Anyhoo, I expect that if we actually need more brainpower (which we don't seem to need, at this point), evolution/mutation/CowboyNeal will cause some of the redundancy of the brain to disappear - thereby opening up more 'processing power! woot!'
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.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
to Michael Chritons recent book (Prey)
I thought it was obivious, Boogers! No more nose picken for me!
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.
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.
Science Fiction often bases itself on the current speculations of the future based on what the "leading edge" of technology is at the time.
Call that "coincidence"? I dont, but you're an idiot.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
But what happens when they form thier own union?
So, if you're converted to a machine, what motivates you?
this is a new evolution of biotechnology!! this is great,folks!I read an article, Who talk about the computers of the future.According this article, Within 10 years, the computers Dont need repairs!the repair Could be Automatic!Who guess which this fact happen in the near future?? best regards. Blueice88
We've already been using computers for years to download pr0n consisting of images of naked living cells. It's only natural that the distribution medium itself should be made from living cells.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Eat?? They do it for the love, man.
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!
You can't handle the truth.
is a MYTH. Besides that, it has no scientific meaning saying that "90% of brain capacity is unused", since brain capacity can not really be measured.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
"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?
We will no longer be able to say "this wire is a piece of shit!" and have it mean anything bad!
Planetary network: Network that covers the entire planet.
Gaia:Any of a number of theories that deal with the planet as a system.
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
that i have to get my PC a proper burial when it died on me? will the decomposing machine smells as bad as human carcass ?
Coincidence that the story was on slashdot the same day he read it in the book, you fucking moron. How the christ does somebody with your level of intelligence get a karma bonus?
I think as soon as we're technologically able, we should move away from the whole biology thing.
Don't you think it might be a good idea to first understand this whole biology thing?
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.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Failure to comprehend, I guess you're an idiot too. But that would be redundant.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Here is a Mirror.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
Yes- we all know how many morons have Master's degrees from Harvard. Shut the fuck up.
Being in a meat body sucks
;- )
Virgin!
You can't take the sky from me...
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
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!"
sure, 10um is really small, but if Intel and AMD already have 90um processes ready for *commercial launch, i'm not so sure this newborn method will provide any revolution. also, i fail to see how any amount of genetic engineering can tell a bunch of one celled bacterium to make me a 32 bit ALU.
If we use our own unassigned nerves, we won't have a risk of the body rejecting the material. I'm not a sceintist, but i'm pretty sure any forign object within the body (including bacteria not their in the first place) would be rejected by the white blood cells. This could be really bad....
and not only that, but why the hell would i want mushrooms growing out of my head? Being smart as I am is already a social stigma, let alone having tubers growing out of my skull.
click me
Eckeltricity.
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!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
And face it, in a 2-party system attacking the leader of one party implicitly puts you in the other party.
Hurry up, I want my trapper keeper 2000 !!!
but mohoooom
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.
You are a fucking dumbass if you think that a piece of paper *makes* you smart. Eat a big plate of your own shut the fuck up. Thanks.
PS. Blow me.
This sounds familiar to the premise behind Michael Crichtons latest book Prey.
I look forward to see the alpha release of this.
On somebody else's wetware
Tech Public Policy stuff
Brain tissue, meninges, or Cerebrospinal fluid?
Yes.
Don't let the lusers get you down.
I'm surprised DNA Computing 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.
I would think that since the pc would be made from living organisms that it would never break down unless something came along and wiped them out...like an actual virus. I would think they would be able to program them to fix anything that started to decay or wear down.
Don't feel bad. I abandoned my Slashdot account over being harrased for the exact same thing a year or two ago. It's not worth my time to worry about an online reputation that can be modded by idiots.
You're not thinking ahead. In your robot body you can just press the "Orgasm" button.
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.
It's only monday and already Timothy posted two stories with a missing link.
/. 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 ;)
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
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
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?)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
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!"
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
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.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
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.
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.
My Blog
Computers of the future will be built not by factory machines, but by living cells such as bacteria.
Our computers will be built by bacteria? The magic nanobots will amaze and dazzle us. Excellent.
Maybe humans will be able to enhance themselves so they can work 24 hours per day without care or complaint. Wouldn't that be great? Nanotechnology can be used to build anything! Why eat an apple grown the old fashioned way. That's not cool. Surely ADM will just assemble one for you.
In all seriousness, we must be extremely cautious of the new biomolecular and nanotechnologies. Even if you don't heed the words of Bill Joy, with his dire warnings about self replicating nanotechnology, consider the type of world the Them have in mind for the rest of us once control of nanotechnology is achieved. Should private tyrannies, the same corporations that are responsible for the horrific state of the planet, be trusted with what amounts to the power of creation?
Technology is being used to harness our productive and creative energies for the exclusive benefit of an increasingly adept and devious elite. The more advanced technology becomes, the lower wages (and higher taxes) go. Why? Because technology allows the Them to stick it to us in an ever increasing number of ways. Simple. Beautiful. Diabolical. Graph it, in terms of individual buying power, if you doubt what I'm saying. This race to the bottom is a byproduct of technological advancement in the hands of psychopaths. Twenty first century technology, under the command and control of an elite with 19th century attitudes, will almost definitely lead to the destruction of most life on this planet. Interestingly enough, technology is not the problem. The intent of the user is the problem.
Yeah, yeah, Kevin. We know all of that. This has been the case since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. So what, in the name of God, are you on about?
This is the point: Technology is being used to enslave us. If you doubt that, you aren't taking an objective look at modern society. But we are now entering a phase where the technologies under development are more dangerous than anything we have ever dabbled with; and they have lower barriers to entry than, say, nuclear weapons. Humans have only possessed the capability of destroying life on this planet for about the last sixty years. Whether or not we make it another 60 years depends on our ability to show restraint and to reflect on our previous mistakes. Blindly adopting new technology that has the capacity to enslave or extinguish all life on this planet is the height of folly, yet this is standard operating procedure.
What's the difference, really, between primates and humans? Humans can write things in books, create websites and launch rockets into space, but both species basically look to a silverback for guidance and fling their feces when agitated. If you want to get an idea of how successful humans will be with nanotechnology and genetic engineering, place a crate full of hand grenades into a habitat containing several apes or gorillas and watch what happens.
And before you accuse me of being a continual downer, listen to Joe Frank's, An Enterprising Man (RealAudio stream) . Joe Frank's site. This makes me laugh so damn hard I almost forget it's The End.
The 3092829th story about some revoluationary technology that will be here in "10-20 years" or so but will never actually see.
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.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
it really died!!
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.
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.
I used to work in a tiny aerospace firm. We got bought out by a big firm. They brought in loads of professional executive-suit types that had business-seminar trained personnel skills. Now, instead of being good engineers, we were expected to be "team players" which was a code word for backing up the executive types on wherever they decided to "lead" us, whether or not we could find anything in the laws of physics to support us in such an endeavor. Those of us who stuck by our guns soon found ourselves looking for employment elsewhere.
It was a question of "obedience to authority", as Stanley Milgram so wisely put it. The problem is that many of us, as engineers, could not delegate the responsibility of what we knew would be an inevitable failure, onto someone else. We, as engineers, knew if it wasn't right, it was our fault, no-one else's. Given this, we could not give management the "team-player spirit" they wanted if we weren't confident ourselves that we had the support of the laws of physics to back us up. Therefore, we *had* to go. A manager is worth a helluva lot more than an engineer anyway.. geez, look at the pay scales and who has pads of termination notices in their drawer.
Soon things went haywire, stuff went way over-budget, lots of technical problems, and they ended up selling out to even a bigger corporate entity. I am not privy anymore to how they are handling it...I'm no longer in it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Don't we qualify.
How would such a technology affect the way we make programs? Would they still use 0 and 1(binary)?
[Obligatory Borg reference]
"Resistance is futile."
[/Obligatory Borg Reference]
Need I say more? Your idea sounds like the beginning of that.....
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
You know, it's even simpler to believe you're a vindictive idiot who can't make a cogent argument against Bush's policies and decisions so you resort to ad hominem attacks.
Does anyone else feel like they are inside a box trying to find a corner to walk around? I'll believe it when I see it, and then I still probably won't buy it.
Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it. ~A. Perlis
well, inasmuch as the borg are _written_ to be big and scary, sure, it doesn't seem like much of a life, but if you're simply a digital copy of a mind that occasionally inhabits a semi-meat body...
Furthermore, there wouldn't be much of a meat body anyway. Besides, you could make the outside look just like normal Homo sapiens sapiens, and assuming we've figured neuronal functions out well enough to build an artificial replacement, I'm pretty sure that the sensory experience of being in my supposed manufactured body could be made to exactly duplicate that of being in a live body.
Plus, the prospect of neuron-by-neuron replacement whilst still going about your daily life would draw much fewer complaints from the more luddite elements of our society. If you're only replacing one brain cell, how is that so different from having a myoelectric arm? and if you're only replacing two cells? Three? Three dozen? Half? All? Where would you draw the line? If you've built a functioning replica of someone's brain while they're still using it, and there's a perfect copy of them inside, it's still them, right? There's been no real death there, has there? I mean, if alcoholics kill millions of brain cells on a regular basis, and we still call them human, what's the difference in simply having brain cells replaced one by one with a mechanical analogue?
The really compelling thing about this to me is something I realized in studying the human brain. The sheer number of interconnections dwarfs the number of transistors we can manufacture in a short time.
To get a structure of that size and complexity, biology wins with exponential growth rather than linear.
For example, say your cell population doubles every half hour. In 32 hours you have 2^64 cells. Try to get to build that nunber of interconnected devices in one structure with any linear process.
Biology has always seemed to be the only way to get to large and complex enough structures to be truly interesting.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Does it have rapid auto fire like some of those old C64 joysticks?
Wireless brain connections to integrate minds must be lots of MBps! (Besides, considering the average american waist line -- it wouldn't hurt that badly in the looks department, either.)
That was that karma...
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Will it be Virtual or Real?
Then we can call it the M$ EBOLA instead of the M$ EULA
"You one eyed Pirate..."
The lunatic is in my head
"Computers Will Be Built By Living Cells"
[Translation]
"Computer Will Be Built By [People]"
Who's going to make the first clone.
Two thoughts struck me reading that news post-
Cells and growing things within the body occasionally go haywire. Appart from the whole "what does it eat" issue, what happens when the bacteria decides to get really super productive with buildin' your brain? Do you enter into an "old lady who swallowed a fly" syndrome, and start sucking down counter bacteria, or do you get really smart before you get really screwed?
Objects not quite around the corner may be closer than they appear. Technological progress is going faster and faster. I don't think this is as far off as the post implies. Hell, we've got Borg rats, how far off can this really be?
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Zepalesque, smaller circuits have higher processing power, so ideally, you'd want to have as small a circuit as possible while not so small that you'd run into problems with Heisenberg's Principle.
Therefore, computers made by biomaterials are likely to have higher processing power due to the smaller size of their circuits.
Your dismissal of emotion and the appeal to a more logic-derived interaction with the world is actually a bit chilling. I mean, do you honestly think that it's merely your brain that makes you human? I suppose a better question would be whether you consider being human necessary. It sounds as though if given the chance, you'd gladly discard the biologic trappings of your humanity in exchange for a "better-designed" manufactured set of atoms to do your brain's bidding.
If we could weed out greed and lust and fear and love and hate and all of the other pesky emotions through some sort of replicatable process, what would we be? I'd personally rather not go through "life" as a glorified assembly-line robot, interacting with a world full of similarly inhuman individuals. Sure, we wouldn't be beholden to the ruthless DNA that is trying to keep the species alive, but would a life composed purely of abstract reasoning and problem-solving truly be worth living?
As a side-note, I still don't buy the argument about how vulnerable we are in meat-form. I mean, we're the most successful critters on earth (bacteria, cockroaches, yes, yes, but using technology we can already live in extremes that no other earth critter can match), and although diseases still affect humans, in the industrialized world death by disease is statistically minimal. Predators that can actually hunt humans? You proved my point. The fact that they won't attack humans means that humans with our puny meat-bodies have successfully defeated such predators through technology (most of which is no more advanced than a pole with something sharp at the end). You could argue that without technology to enhance our puny bodies, we'd be unable to do this, but that same argument would apply to the notion of "manufactured" human bodies. When's the last time your found a car, server, bicycle, space shuttle, etc., that was free of defects and self-sustaining?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
> Your brain takes what it needs, which is a fixed amount
No, it isn't. The harder you think, the more energy your brain needs to suck up. One way scientists study which parts of the brain do which jobs is to record how much glucose takeup there is in the various parts of the brain during various different mental activities. And see the other reply to this about "bonk". Why do you think you can't think when you're truly exhausted?
Chris Mattern
If you had a calculator that was hard-wired even peripherally to your brain, it would be of great help. The human brain isn't designed to execute lots of instructions sequentially, that are required for computation, but is designed to execute many instructions in parallel based on the connectionist model. Having an on-board calculator for humans, would be equivelant to a pentuim processor all of a sudden acquiring a semantic dictionary, and a 'relevance' database, so it could quickly discount irrelevant stimuli. P.S. in case that doesn't seem like a big deal, context and relevance are some of the biggest reasons why facial recognition fails quite often, and some of the greatest challenges in AI.
Is it starting to look like we are becomeing like the zerg is starcraft. Or have I played to many computer games.