The Ultimate Question Finder
In Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the Earth turned out to be a giant computer built by the mice to answer the ultimate question. Well, actually, to find the ultimate question; they already had the answer: “42”
On the face of it, this seems ridiculous; how could mice afford the cost? But maybe Adams was closer to the truth than we realized.
When talking about intelligence, it’s nearly always been considered at an individual level. Einstein was brilliant, George is a ‘C’ student, and while we have SAT scores to compare students, we think little of the intelligence of a nation. If we do, it’s about whether Japanese kids are better at Math than their American counterparts.
But what happens when intelligence becomes massed together? When we become part of the Collective, and one with The Borg? What if the Internet becomes the expression of intelligence? We've collected intelligence together before - in places called libraries - but the Internet is much more than a library; it provides instant connections between diverse works.
IBM is taking its massive super-computer Blue Gene and looking at placing the entire internet on it. Apart from providing a dictionary of every sexual position, what will this accomplish? And is the intelligence of the internet the files it contains, or is it also the application of the intelligence behind it (i.e. the people who rate things on Amazon and respond to your web posts.)
On the face of it, this seems ridiculous; how could mice afford the cost? But maybe Adams was closer to the truth than we realized.
When talking about intelligence, it’s nearly always been considered at an individual level. Einstein was brilliant, George is a ‘C’ student, and while we have SAT scores to compare students, we think little of the intelligence of a nation. If we do, it’s about whether Japanese kids are better at Math than their American counterparts.
But what happens when intelligence becomes massed together? When we become part of the Collective, and one with The Borg? What if the Internet becomes the expression of intelligence? We've collected intelligence together before - in places called libraries - but the Internet is much more than a library; it provides instant connections between diverse works.
IBM is taking its massive super-computer Blue Gene and looking at placing the entire internet on it. Apart from providing a dictionary of every sexual position, what will this accomplish? And is the intelligence of the internet the files it contains, or is it also the application of the intelligence behind it (i.e. the people who rate things on Amazon and respond to your web posts.)
IBM explores 67.1m-core computer for running entire internet
Project Kittyhawk: building a global-scale computer: Blue Gene/P as a generic computing platform
posted by Taz at 2:04 PM
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