The planet sized processor stuff reminds me of Charlie Stross' sci-fi short story "Scratch Monkey" which features nanotech, planet sized processors which colonize space and build more planet-sized processors. The application is upload, real-time memory backup, and afterlife in DreamTime (distributed simulation environment), and an option of reincarnation.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/monkey/ Adam On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 04:44:58PM -0400, Jack Lloyd wrote: > On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 11:04:15AM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote: > > [...] > > The system will consume 10^25 * 60 nanowatts or about 6 * 10^17 watts. > > Now, that's a lot. It's four times what the earth receives from the sun. > > So we have to build a disk four times the area (not volume) of the earth, > > collect that power and funnel it to our computers. Probably we would > > scatter the computers throughout the disk, which would be mostly composed > > of solar collectors. (Keeping the disk gravitationally stable is left > > as an exercise for the student, as is the tradeoff involved in making > > it smaller but moving it closer to the sun.) > > If I did my unit conversions right, such a disk would be over 30,000 miles in > diameter. So we'll probably get some advance notice - "Hey, what's that big-ass > thing orbiting around the Moon?" > > -Jack
