Word: siliconing
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...billion neurons, each with some 1,000 connections to other neurons, with each connection capable of performing about 200 calculations per sec.). As Moore's law reaches its limit and computing power no longer doubles roughly every 12 to 18 months (by my reckoning, around 2019), conventional silicon chips may not be able to deliver that kind of performance. But each time one computing technology has reached its limit, a new approach has stepped in to continue exponential growth (see "What Will Replace Silicon?" in this issue). Nanotubes, for example, which are already functioning in laboratories, could be fashioned into...
With their sharp black suits and their surgically implanted silicon chips, the cyberpunk hard guys of '80s science fiction (including the characters in my early novels and short stories) already have a certain nostalgic romance about them. These information highwaymen were so heroically attuned to the new technology that they laid themselves open to its very cutting edge. They became it; they took it within themselves...
Many of us, even today, or most particularly today, must feel as though we already have silicon chips embedded in our brains. Some of us, certainly, are not entirely happy with that feeling. Some of us must wish that ubiquitous computation would simply go away and leave us alone. But that seems increasingly unlikely...
From the viewpoint of bioengineering, a silicon chip is a large and rather complex shard of glass. Inserting a silicon chip into the human brain involves a certain irreducible inelegance of scale. It's scarcely more elegant, relatively, than inserting a steam engine into the same tissue. It may be technically possible, but why should we even want to attempt such a thing...
Jeff Bridges got zapped into it in TRON. Keanu Reeves reached it by means of a red pill in The Matrix. In Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash--a cult classic in Silicon Valley--our hero, Hiro Protagonist, goes there wearing goggles and a pair of virtual-reality gloves. It's where I expect to be spending my evenings in the twilight of my life, without ever leaving the comfort of my sofa. And--who knows?--maybe I'll meet you there...