Ancient Future

2001-07-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Cosmology Machine, Britain's biggest academic supercomputer was turned on today. They say it:

"can perform 10 billion arithmetic operations in a second. This number of operations would a take a numerate individual about a million years of continuous calculation to complete. Alternatively, if all of Earth’s six billion inhabitants were proficient at arithmetic, it would take them about two hours to carry out the same number of operations that the supercomputer can carry out in a single second."

After the machine has worked one week, it will have done what would take everyone on Earth working together over a century to complete. What an amazing idea—that we can approximate a century's worth of the collective number-crunching potential of all humanity in a single week, with one machine. I wonder what they'll discover!

2001-07-30T18:14:00.000-07:00

In school, we learn in "Biology" how cells fit into the scheme of things. We see what they’re capable of "making up". But what about galaxies? They’re amazing, unimaginably immense energy systems (made up of millions of stars), and there are billions of them! What do they make up? What is their function? How does it compare to the function of an atom? A cell? What is this whole thing we’re in—this "universe"?

2001-07-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

What a crazy day of writing. I think it's so bizarre to have an idea in your head that you really, really need to think about and get out there. It's an odd role to play. It's just how it is—I'm like someone out at an outpost!

2001-07-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing experiment! There are so many things to say, to think about—most of which haven't even been imagined yet! As one thing leads to another, the most interesting cycles and systems come about, and all of a sudden things that were never possible start happening, and dreams become fascinating ideas with claws!

A beginning end and an ending beginning!