Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #11018



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Terry Newton wtnewton@nc5.infi.net
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:41:32 -0800
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: BEAM: Tendency toward miniaturization


> Way off. If we can do 1 billion elements in a 100 years, multiply that
> by about another billion or so (and that might be a way low estimate).
> How long will that take? It took nature over 3 billion years to create
> us and pack together the number of elements necessary to make something
> alive and conscious of its environment... to think us dumb humans can
> do it in 50-100 years is... no comment.

Yeah...and Bill Gates was once quoted as saying that 640 Kb of memory is all
one would ever need to run any program. :) Now look at us...I've got 256
Meg in mine at home...and a little over a gig at work. You have to remember
humans don't learn at the same constant rate...we learn exponentially. I
figure we'll hit a billion in less then 10 years...and a trillion 5 years
later...etc. etc. It's more of a snowball effect....you've got maybe only a
few researchers with limitted budgets now...but when they are done preping
the foundation, larger corporations and governments with HUGE budgets will
be using what's allready found...and sharing/stealing any other information
that they may need to get to thier objective faster... The effect is that
we'll collectively come to conclusions MUCH faster than you think. I don't
think you're giving us all the credit that we're due. Besides...comparing
nature to humanity is like apples and oranges. Humanity has consiousness.
Natural selection was an accident. Unless, like me, you believe that God
had his hand in there too.

Dane Gardner


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