The technicum is whispering to itself
The technicum is the whole system of technology... The technicum contains 170 quadrillion computer chips wired into one mega-scaled computing platform. The total number of transistors in the global network is approximately the same as the number of neurons in your brain. And the number of links among files in the network (think of all the links among all the web pages of the world) is about equal to the number of synapse links in your brain. Thus the growing planetary electronic membrane is already comparable to the complexity of the human brain. It has three billion artificial eyes (phone and webcam) plugged in, it processes keyword searches at the humming rate of 14 kilohertz (a barely audible high pitched whine) and it is so large a contraption that it now consumes 5 percent of the world's electricity. When computer scientists dissect massive rivers of traffic flowing through it, they cannot account for the source of all the bits. Every now and then a bit is transmitted incorrectly, and while most of those mutations can be traced to identifiable causes such as hacking, machine error or line damage, the researchers are let with a few percent that somehow changed themselves. In other words, a small fraction of what the technicum communicates originates not from any of its known human-made nodes but from the system at large. The technicum is whispering to itself.
What Technology Wants, 14
- Posted from Middletown, DE
Posted on Monday, Nov 15, 2010
