Topic awaiting preservation: Computers Ran By DNA? What The!? (Page 1 of 1)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0224_030224_DNAcomputer.html


Um........weird but yet VERY very cool.

"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

Yep. That is cooness pure!!

Organic computers...


WebShaman

Someone compile POV-Ray for this thing.

quote:

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One of the most ingenious ideas being pursued is to compute using DNA, treating the double-stranded molecule as a kind of biological computer tape (except that instead of encoding 0s and 1s in binary, it uses the four nucleic acids, represented by A, T, C, G). This approach holds much promise for crunching big numbers . Hence large banks and institutions may one day use it. However, a DNA computer is an unweildly contraption, consisting of a jungle of tubes of organic liquid, and is unlikely to replace a laptop in the near future.

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Kaku, M., Time, June 26, 2000, p. 114.

Such people also said that mankind would never break the sound barrier...and would never go to the moon...

Where there is a will, there's a way...this stuff is in it's infancy...who knows where it will lead? The thought, and idea, though is exciting...IMHO.

They said computers would never be smaller than an assembly hall. Personally, I can't wait to get my brain replaced with a quantum DNA 3D-processor computer. Then I'll live forever in a virtual reality controlled by our benevolent AI masters. Woo-hah!

Hooray. Virtual infinite existence. I want that.

Me too. Who needs eternal life, when one can have eternal virtual existence? Whoohoooo!

Matrix, here I come!

Don't you dare pull that plug!

[This message has been edited by WebShaman (edited 03-13-2003).]

Well, you can still be a Christian, it's just double-coverage. If the giant world-spanning supercomputer goes down, and your mind "dies," you go to heaven.

Then when the computer's done rebooting, and it restores your mind from a backup, you come back from heaven and you've got all these great stories!

Or possibly you stay in heaven, and a new you is created from the backup, and the next time the supercomputer crashes, that you goes to heaven too, and you get to hang out with yourself.

Sorry about being 100% completely off topic but Perfect Thunder's post made me wonder if thats how teleporters would work. I mean if you get all you atoms disassembled and then replicated somewhere else, wouldn't you die in the process?

The question is "continuity of consciousness." Does your personal consciousness continue if your mind is recreated somewhere else? Or even if it's copied to a computer and your original brain is destroyed?

When it comes to matter transmission, well, who the hell knows? Teleportation is impossible on the macroscopic level, barring gigantic breakthroughs in physics.

The idea of uploading your brain-state to a computer, on the other hand, is quite possible, at least in the moderately near future. (Possibly even within our lifetimes.) The solution, of course, is to replace the brain slowly, a little bit at a time, retaining consciousness at all points. Eventually, your physical body is entirely electronic (or you don't have one at all, existing entirely as software and data) -- but your personal consciousness has not been disrupted.

The question of whether it's a good idea to transfer yourself into a computer system is debatable, of course -- there are hundreds of thousands of pages of science fiction on that very topic. Personally, I'll give it a shot, assuming the host computer a) has the Three Laws of Robotics hardwired, and b) has a First Law override allowing me to terminate my existence if I so choose.