How would you feel about a setting where people decided to cut corners in terms of technological advancement and, instead of bringing machines to the intelligence of people, started 3D-printing organic brains with mostly human DNA (but genetically modified to improve performance) to precise specifications, running most of their electronics on such tailored brains?
Say, they could have, instead of massive traditional servers, enormous building-sized computer-interfaced brains requiring trucks of sugar and water as well as elaborate cooling to work, and which can literally die in case of their life sustaining systems failing.
Or they could have portable electronics such as phones with small biochips which sometimes need to be fed sustenance pills to avoid starvation.
There were actually multiple experiments in this direction IRL already, so this might as well be a prediction of the future, given that Moore's Law is RIP in Peace.
Wetware Computers
And no, this wouldn't be magical realm - sentience and sapience both require specific brain structures, which would be absent in tailored-to-specifications brains, unless the designers deliberately wanted that as a feature.
...
Oh well, I guess noone gives a shit.
Considering it might well be impossible to bring machines to the intelligence of people, I'd appreciate such a setting and consider it hard sci-fi.
How is any of that cutting corners ?
The wetware computers would be harder to build, more prone to failing, and have a most costly upkeep because you can't turn them off and forget about them for months at a time. Then there is the matter of disease.
As for how it works as a setting, if you make it consistent then you haven't given me enough details to judge it.
I feel like that is incredibly lazy, and forces us to be reliant on a machine we have no idea how it works.
Also it is how 40k works.
So, id be pretty upset. I hate lazy half solutions.
>How is any of that cutting corners ?
It avoids having to go through the enormous pains of making an electronic equivalent, which seems extremely difficult from the perspective of modern science.
I think it's okay, can lead to some neat things, though I wouldn't want it to be the only way of doing computers - it's pretty impratical for commercial elctronics, for instance.
Not like it's a new idea though
It is cutting corners because it is technologically easier, even though it is shittier and more expensive in every way.
>consider it hard sci-fi
That's silly, everyone knows the only hard sciences that matter in hard sci-fi are physics and computer
>it's pretty impratical for commercial elctronics, for instance.
I think both would be a thing.
Normal electronics for those who are too lazy to properly take care of organic stuff, wetware electronics for those who are ready to spend the required effort in return for getting a more powerful device overall.
Guys, how about this idea:
To ease maintenance, people implant such wetware (tailored to their own DNA to avoid immune system rejection and whatever other issues) into themselves.
Bonus points: a popular option for such implants are elongated ears, which are stylised after mythical elves.
Or, in other words, we Eldar now?
That's silly, we're hitting the ceiling on informatics as we speak.
While I agree that Moore's Law is dead, I believe the user you replied to was sarcastic.
Couldn't you just make an electronic brain? As in, a bunch of electronic neurons that perform computationally identical functions to natural ones, arranged and strung together like neurons in a natural brain. It would be a cleaner alternative that requires less maintenance and power, and it'd be faster as well since the chemical signals are converted to electronic ones.
>Couldn't you just make an electronic brain
Because that is still super fucking difficult from the perspective of modern day science and Moore's Law is dead.
It's actually fairly likely that we'll reach advanced 3D-printing of organics before we reach anywhere near that level of digital computers.
Kind off unrealistic as a biological brain takes more effort to maintain and has a lot of ethical concerns to boot.
Also by nature computer sciences will advance faster than biological ones. Your test brains need time to grow and develop. A computer can be constructed much faster. So you will have less "downtime" in your research.
So yeah, more expensive, unethical, impractical and improbable.
But it's your setting so if you want biocomputers you can just handwave it with some mumbojumbo about a dangerous computer virus or something like that.
While it's an interesting idea, it's not really a functional concept for current computing.
The strengths demonstrated by organic brains are the strengths associated with actual intelligence: Lateral thinking, intuition, creativity, and generally being able to make internal "shortcuts". They can't hold a candle to the raw processing power of a conventional computer.
Though, the idea of cloning modified brains to make animal-intelligence machines (or human-intelligence, if you think it's ethical or don't care about ethics) holds loads of merit.
>But it's your setting so if you want biocomputers you can just handwave it with some mumbojumbo about a dangerous computer virus or something like that.
My autism demands I mention that any organic computer with a network connection would be even more vulnerable to cracking/viruses just because fixing wetware exploits would be an absolute BITCH. And likely require a complete replacement of the assembler.
I've always had an idea for a kind of cyberpunk story revolving around computers being genetically altered human creatures about the size of a fetus kept in solution in a vat with wires hooked up to it to act as the processing unit. Normally the creatures aren't sentient, can only compute and aren't really awake or aware. Their biological needs would be met by the solution they float in and every few months would need to be taken to a store to have the old solution replaced.
I've always wondered what the legal ramifications of doing that would be.
>Also by nature computer sciences will advance faster than biological ones
See andUnless you revive Moore's Law, biocomputers are kind of viable.
>I've always wondered what the legal ramifications of doing that would be.
Depends entirely on who writes the laws for it and where you do it.
Realistically, it depends on if the "HUMAN BRAIN SLAVES NO" movement gets more support than the "SUPERCOMPUTERS IN VATS YES" movement.
>given that Moore's Law is RIP in Peace.
Sauce?
>I've always wondered what the legal ramifications of doing that would be.
Oh, user. As long as it makes money and it's not being done by poor people there are no laws.
>Sauce?
Google it, faggot.
So just 40k?
>wetware exploits
>actual motivation to make BLIT
Pls no.
40k has cloned humans, this is 3D-printed brains.
More like pls yes.
I find the idea of real life BLIT's absolutely hilarious.
You want to live in a world without images and videos?
Why not cut corners and breed specialized people to calculate shit for you?
Or, what happens if a wet-computer embryo grows to full humanity? What if a wet-computer grows rampant in the depths of a sewer, just feeding off refuse and accidentally making a sewer-supercomputer? What if 3rd world hackers decide just to use existing brain matter for their Beowulf arrays? What if a country's sleeping people were taxed computing time, so they calculate and run complex shit while they're dreaming?
new gen of chips are already being pushed further and further back, since the usual way Moore's Law kept up its thing (smaller die fabrication) does some Really Fucking Weird Physics Shit (TM) sub 10nm - which is only one generation ahead of our current chips. We can't just make shit smaller now, we have to make it smarter. And nothing does networking like wetware.
Not yet, anyways.
[memetic kill agent activated]
Unfortunately, due to your current outstanding balance of [redacted] credits, our baliffs have been authorised to consign your neural matrices to the Veeky Forums@Home project.
>What if a wet-computer grows rampant in the depths of a sewer, just feeding off refuse and accidentally making a sewer-supercomputer?
That makes no fucking sense.
Rather, with adblock-like filters which quickly sanitise everything shown to you on-screen.
>while physical limits to transistor scaling such as source-to-drain leakage, limited gate metals, and limited options for channel material have been reached, new avenues for continued scaling are open. The most promising of these approaches rely on using the spin state of electron spintronics, tunnel junctions, and advanced confinement of channel materials via nano-wire geometry. A comprehensive list of available device choices shows that a wide range of device options is open for continuing Moore's law into the next few decades.[105] Spin-based logic and memory options are being developed actively in industrial labs,[106] as well as academic labs.[107]
In bioprinting 3d printing a brain is not even considered, things that are being worked on right now are things like livers and specific pieces of the heart for example. I don't now why people think you can just magically 3D print everything you can think of, creating tissues requires stem cells and a very deep understanding of them. Not something that makes neat plastic figurines.
Brains can't be studied as closely as other tissues, because when you look at a tissue underneath an electron microscope, it has to be dead for it to work. And then you can't observe the electrical impulses and how they are guided.
Right now studying the fysiological processes of the entire brain is simply impossible. We can only study small groups of neurons.
Also it would still have enormous ethical concerns. Even if you make a fully funtioning brain like that, the scientific community would see it as no better than slavery. You just enslave a brain instead of a full functioning body. Right now, even working with human embryos is frowned upon (read: downright illegal in most countries).
Wew i got triggered sorry bout that, but I don't feel like deleting it after I typed it all out.
Nothing wrong with spergin out about your setting, thats half the fun!
You could also pull a Dune and say that all computers were outlawed after a robot uprising.
If you make your setting very far into the future, you could also say that your wetware has regenerative properties and put them in bioships or something like that.
Or maybe electromagnetic pulses from some stars render all computers useless, and this could be circumventd
You could justify wetware being used as a hybrid interface device between human brains and your supercomputers. Maybe because the "mumbojumbo"-effect causes biological brains to reject a mechical reality (AR, VR)
GURPS got biocomputers.
Anyway, they are sort of fun I guess. Especially if you want a more "Alien" inspired sci-fi setting where technology is inherently creepy (pull out the computer shelf and there's moist brain structure in there).
What I mean is, what if a discarded biocomputer didn't die when it's flushed down the drain - but instead flourishes in the sewers? And that it had done that for years and now ten blocks' worth of sewers is covered in living biocomputer goo.
>The strengths demonstrated by organic brains are the strengths associated with actual intelligence: Lateral thinking, intuition, creativity, and generally being able to make internal "shortcuts". They can't hold a candle to the raw processing power of a conventional computer.
Some neuroscientists believe that the only reason we don't have the sheer processing power of silicon computers is because humans don't understand their own minds enough to know how to educate themselves to commit their minds to pure processing. Several people have already shown extremely impressive processing capacity.
In other words: there are no mentats because we haven't figured out how to train mentats to be mentats yet.
I'd be more interested in an industrial-era setting (maybe less 1890s and more 1910s-20s?) where instead of inventing the car or aeroplane, people figure out how to Frankenstein and just have closets full of brains in jars of nutrient-rich preservative goop, crunching numbers all day while a machine prods the pleasure center for every quota met, and the fear/pain center for every error.
This would be a good horror premise.
>What I mean is, what if a discarded biocomputer didn't die when it's flushed down the drain - but instead flourishes in the sewers? And that it had done that for years and now ten blocks' worth of sewers is covered in living biocomputer goo.
That is literally impossible, as such a biocomputer would need sophisticated life support system to avoid dying. Sewers without life support would definitely be 100% lethal.
>That is literally impossible, as such a biocomputer would need sophisticated life support system to avoid dying. Sewers without life support would definitely be 100% lethal.
You're assuming said biocomputer is as fragile as the brain, rather than a hybridization of neural matter and something else to make it resilient.
Imagine a thinking fungus, for example. One designed to thrive in any detritus that can provide it nutrition. This would make maintenance far easier than it would for manufactured soft-tissue, and unfortunately make it theoretically possible to have accidental neurocomputer growths.
...That's actually a fairly neat idea.
Slime mold super-computers growing under your forests, under your lawn
Alternatively, deliberately infecting yourself with a symbiotic organism that allows you to interface with technology
I feel that this TED talk is relevant to your setting:
youtube.com
GURPS has this, too.
That would be Orion.
But the reason why they do this instead of computers is because brains can have magical powers, and since most of the tech is magitech, they figured out this way to make psychic amplifiers.
>sentience and sapience both require specific brain structures
We don't know this. Sentience, sapience, and consciousness may full-well be the result of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of neurological structures gestalting togother.
>muh gestalt
when will this meme end?
>when will this meme end?
When neuroscience discovers the source of consciousness, and shuts you anthropocentric cocksuckers up.
Most people don't even know what that word means. How could it be a meme?
Shadowrun
Reminds me of the creatures in Geneforge. I think they were called Thinkers or Brains, but they looked like little fat pigs with vestigial arms and legs that rested in bowls of nutrient fluid. They were basically the computers and administrators of that setting.
arstechnica.com
IBM developed tiny, energy efficient artificial neurons
bump
The question this begs- what for?
Computers have calculating power that exceeds human brains in any one area. However if you need flexibility and want to use soft programming, wetware might be a very solid solution one day. Wouldn't be brains in jars, and probably wouldn't have enough semblance to human brain to develop consciousness or identity. Unless you try to run a really complex system off of one, then it just might.
Someone managed to get the advanced medical knowledge of the Mi-Go on how to make brains in a jar.
>and Moore's Law is dead
People have been saying that since the 80s, and its been wrong.
Been working on a sci-fantasy biotech setting with a premise.
>Why use organic h.r giger-ish technology instead of machines?
>Only organic material can conduct souls and magic/psi
>Brains can therefore be used as magitech battery/packs that can indefinitely generate tremendous power through magic/psi as long as they remain alive and conscious
>Organic machinery can conduct these energies to great effect.
>Cue everyone has Bio-augments and lives in organic cities
The twist is going to be that it looks metal and scary but it's actually not grim-dark at all.
With a (kinda similar) premise (regarding brains)*
Sounds messy
So you're saying I can have an organic cell phone that I charge with my own blood sugar?
Yes.
Just had a weird brainwave. Suppose someone combines this with the telegraph/telephone and social psychology?
You might have a proto-Internet under the command of a secret super-cabal, binding the world in wires and rhetoric, using the forces of history itself to demonize and wipe away all opposition.
also watch this one,
20 minutes long, but it's honestly worth it for the implications alone
youtube.com
>TL;DW
the forest trees uses the subterranean fungus network as a way to transfer information chemically, and identify and communicate with its offspring about new threats, as well as sharing nutrients with growing and resource deficient trees. Foreign tree species introduced could not communicate using the network, and the recorded interactions suggest it behaves like our Internet.
>TL;DR the TL;DR
the blue tree cat hippies were actually right
forest has an underground biochemical internet with fungal wires
>Wetware Computers
The mighty swaglard supercomputer complex
You folk are woefully uninformed. Berkeley Labs made a 1nm transistor using car lube and CNTs.
wat
Try Starfish by Peter Watts, it talks a lot about the idea of "smart gels", organic computers synthesised from nerve tissue.
Or, if you're a biosci cunt like me, read this:
The smart gels were inspired by the research of Masuo Aizawa, a Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, profiled in the August 1992 issue of Discover magazine. At that time, he'd got a few neurons hooked together into the precursors of simple logic gates. I shudder to think where he's got to now.
The application of neural nets to navigating through complex terrain is described in "Robocar" by B. Daviss (Discover, July 1992.), which describes work being done by Charles Thorpe of (where else) Carnegie-Mellon University.]
From the appendixes of Starfish, where the incredible Mr. Watts backs up his sci-fi with what little science exists. Good thread OP.
>Masuo Aizawa, a Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology
>Tokyo
TETSUOOOO
Cool, thanks.