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Liquid Computing

Nikkiro

22:09 / 12.11.01

Don't know if anyone else saw this, but check out
http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/110157.html

"Imagine a computer, suspended in a flask of liquid..." the article begins (though no mentions of ultramenstruum, though...)

grant

13:19 / 14.11.01

Just doing a story now on a Bell Labs team who have created a transistor the size of a single molecule.

I think we may be hitting some limits here.

Rose

08:19 / 18.11.01

quote:...But in a quantum computer, the bits are simultaneously both one and zero...

How sexy.

netbanshee

14:56 / 20.11.01

...well aren't the quantum computers being tested now using molecules on the surface of a stable liquid gas? That's at least what I gathered from before...

Baz Auckland

18:41 / 25.02.03

Along the same lines, from National Geographic

Computer Made from DNA and Enzymes:

Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA.
A year ago, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, unveiled a programmable molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules instead of silicon microchips. Now the team has gone one step further. In the new device, the single DNA molecule that provides the computer with the input data also provides all the necessary fuel.

sleazenation

19:16 / 25.02.03

quark sized components anyone?

8===>Q: alyn

16:51 / 26.02.03

K. Eric Drexler's foresight.org used to be a good place to keep track of these kinds of advancements, but I haven't been by in a long time. I don't know if the 'bleeding edge' has moved past them.

Warewullf

09:31 / 28.02.03

From the Harvard article:

...the silicon-based microelectronics industry, which for the last 35 years has been making transistors exponentially smaller every 18 to 24 months...

Intel chairman Gordon Moore observed this doubling of computing capacity as early as 1965...

Scientists anticipate that we will reach the limits of our ability to create silicon chips using standard fabrication line methods sometime between 2012 and 2017.

I'm thinkin' it'll be sometime around December 2012...

thedude

20:04 / 02.03.03

Liquid computing doesn't really surprise me - what do you think sperm is but liquid information?

The Photographer in Blowup

20:39 / 02.03.03

Liquid computing doesn't really surprise me - what do you think sperm is but liquid information?

Good point

In fact, hasn't Morrison used the liquid computing idea already in The Invisibles - Bloody Hell In America?

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

21:34 / 02.03.03

I'm especially intrigued by the sections about nanowires and how they can conceivably lead to the development of sensors, capable of detecting billions of things at once and also a biological computing interface.

Could this lead to people's senses being 'upgraded'? Imagine a hawk's sight; a sense of smell far superior to a bloodhound's; being able to taste minute traces of impurities in drinking water. Sounds pretty cool to me.

Salamander

04:13 / 25.03.03

Imagine a chip made of bucky tubes containing ocillating quarks. Since it depends on a quantum process for the binary switch, it yeilds its answer as you perceve it. Thus the computer becomes schrodengers cat, the cheshire cat, you know whatever.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

22:34 / 18.04.03

but if the computer only computes when you percieve it, doesnt that mean you cant walk away while its working?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:21 / 21.04.03

What if you got up to make a cup of coffee, but kept peering at the computer over your shoulder every so often? Or if you put a cage of gerbils (for example) in front of the screen to do the perciving for you?

01:38 / 22.04.03

It's okay. God is always perceiving the computer, so it will always work.

There was a young man who said, "God
must think it exceedingly odd
when he finds that this tree
continues to be
when there's no one about in the Quad."

Replied God:

"Young man, you're astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
continues to be
since observed by Yours Faithfully, GOD."

(I forget whom to attribute this to. Anyone know the author?)

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

23:25 / 24.04.03

no, but its really cool

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