Unleashing the Power of Nanocomputers: The Potential of Smart Dust Technology

[Gale]

Does anyone know real magic? i mean physical magic. something very obvious, not just the subtle kind. Not, that subtle magic isn't as great, pagan magics i mean mostly being that's about the only magics i can think of, but I'm looking for something pretty apparent.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Can you give an example of what would satisfy your request?
Why do you think such a thing exists?

 

[Gale]

an example would be something like... being able to conjure something... or making things levitate... i dunno, i suppose i mean the really fantasical kind of magic that is probably not at all possible. But it's worth a try to ask...

And as for knowing it exists... well i have a weird be belief that anything imagined can be created... if not this universe, at least some other dimension. Everything we imagine here is happening somewhere esle... what they imagine in other universes... occurs here.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Gale17
an example would be something like... being able to conjure something... or making things levitate... i dunno, i suppose i mean the really fantasical kind of magic that is probably not at all possible. But it's worth a try to ask...

Any sufficiently advanced technology is magic. Maybe all such notions really come down to science in the end...for someone? By the standards of 200 years past, we make magic daily.

And as for knowing it exists... well i have a weird be belief that anything imagined can be created... if not this universe, at least some other dimension. Everything we imagine here is happening somewhere esle... what they imagine in other universes... occurs here.

I imagine that this is true and not.

 

[Gale]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is magic. Maybe all such notions really come down to science in the end...for someone? By the standards of 200 years past, we make magic daily.

do you suppose then that years from now our technology will be so advanced that anything imaginable would be possible?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Gale17
do you suppose then that years from now our technology will be so advanced that anything imaginable would be possible?

If we survive long enough and if we continue as a technological species, then nearly anything. IMO we have only begun to realize our full potential.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Consider a technology envisioned by Vernor Vinge in his novel "A Deepness in the Sky". You have nanocomputers the size of dust grains. They float in the air all around you and are invisible, just as dust grains are. They communicate with each other and accept input from you, partly in the form of coded "passes" with your hands. They can invoke high energy technology to build (seemingly instantly) all kinds of things, and destroy them and play all kinds of games with the environment. It's better than Harry Potter, and it's all "technology".

 

[Andy]

That would be cool, i suppose it would be similar too a holodeck in star trek, always wanted one of them.

 

[Gale]

Consider a technology envisioned by Vernor Vinge in his novel "A Deepness in the Sky". You have nanocomputers the size of dust grains. They float in the air all around you and are invisible, just as dust grains are. They communicate with each other and accept input from you, partly in the form of coded "passes" with your hands. They can invoke high energy technology to build (seemingly instantly) all kinds of things, and destroy them and play all kinds of games with the environment. It's better than Harry Potter, and it's all "technology".

Well i don't know if anything can be better than Hp, quidditch and house elves and all those other cool thingies... but yeah, that would be pretty neat. In my physics class we talked about a future ability to just rearange atoms, you could turn just plain air into cheeseburgers just by tweeking some electrons and nuetrons. But dust computers, that even more cool. I wonder if by the time we reach that technology if we'd have AI. Imagine little computers that you can't see with the ability to think and send messages to all their little friends... creepy

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
Consider a technology envisioned by Vernor Vinge in his novel "A Deepness in the Sky". You have nanocomputers the size of dust grains. They float in the air all around you and are invisible, just as dust grains are. They communicate with each other and accept input from you, partly in the form of coded "passes" with your hands. They can invoke high energy technology to build (seemingly instantly) all kinds of things, and destroy them and play all kinds of games with the environment. It's better than Harry Potter, and it's all "technology".

Michio Kaku claims that we are working on "Smart Dust" for the military right now. This would be used to salt a battle field and then to retrieve real time data for every foot print and wheel track made on the field.