5 votes

Computer built using swarms of soldier crabs

4 comments

  1. [2]
    tesseractcat
    Link
    I really love the idea of computers built on coordinated animals. Maybe in some alternate universe there's some bacteria or other microorganism uniquely suited to this sort of thing. Maybe it...

    I really love the idea of computers built on coordinated animals. Maybe in some alternate universe there's some bacteria or other microorganism uniquely suited to this sort of thing. Maybe it could have kickstarted the computer Era and instead of cyberpunk we'd have biopunk, with literal computer viruses.

    It's been a while since I read it but I think the three body problem book had a species which did computing like this.

    5 votes
    1. ohyran
      Link Parent
      Someone injected bacteriophages in to your computer, that would be awesome. OR that instead of cooling the computer only, the fans etc, are there to ensure you have an acceptable level of heat for...

      Maybe it could have kickstarted the computer Era and instead of cyberpunk we'd have biopunk, with literal computer viruses.

      Someone injected bacteriophages in to your computer, that would be awesome. OR that instead of cooling the computer only, the fans etc, are there to ensure you have an acceptable level of heat for the bacteria to thrive.

      3 votes
  2. hhh
    Link
    I don't know why, but the combination of the serious tone with the ridiculous subject was really funny to me.

    They found that they could build a decent OR-gate using the crabs – this was the place where one or two crab swarms are merged into a single one. However, the more complicated AND-gate required the combined swarm heading down one of three paths. This was found to be less reliable. However, the team believe that they could improve the results by creating a more crab-friendly environment.

    I don't know why, but the combination of the serious tone with the ridiculous subject was really funny to me.

    4 votes
  3. asoftbird
    Link
    This reads like an article on how someone built a computer in Dwarf Fortress using dwarves as logic units.

    This reads like an article on how someone built a computer in Dwarf Fortress using dwarves as logic units.

    3 votes