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Scott Aaronson’s ETH Zurich lectures talk about physical computing (and its limitations, exception being Quantum computing) here: https://gess.ethz.ch/en/news-a

Scott Aaronson’s ETH Zurich lectures talk about physical computing (and its limitations, exception being Quantum computing) here: https://gess.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/paul-bernays-lectures/bernays-2019.html https://gess.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/paul-bernays-lecture... He even makes his own “Soap bubble” computer from people who claim that soap bubbles can be used for global parallel optimization problems. Spoiler, it doesn’t work well and gets stuck in local optima as the size gets larger. Before anyone gets too excited about physical computing ideas, I think watching these 3 lectures from prestigious “Paul Barney’s lectures” is a must. They're about Quantum computing but Scott spends a full lecture about Turing/Extended-Turing thesis and what types of computers in past have tried to break those conjectures (and failed). That is why Quantum computing is interesting - he also dispells a lot of myths about QC we hear today in popular media. Fascinating stuff and I highly recommend spending 3 hours to watch these videos if you're interested in the future of computing.

agumonkey 7y ago
Sad, I loved the idea of bubble computing. I wonder if there are similar ideas with complex electric fields to model equation and enjoy "RT" (sampling speed time) evaluation of solutions.
- JoBrad 7y ago
  I guess the bubble popped early for that area of tech?
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  Every time I hear about a sad story of "this scientist had spent their whole life trying to discover the better computing in DNA and failed" I feel like the reporters are not mentioning the fact that actually the scientist knew perfectly well that their model of computation was inherently unscalable and they were simply pulling money out of absolutely oblivious investors. Oh god I love the _idea_ of better computing. But let's be honest, there isn't much of an alternative, is there?
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    At some point it becomes important to ask yourself, "What would I be content spending my life failing to accomplish?" I mean, it'd be nicer to accomplish it, but if you can find something that you could spend fifty years failing at, that on your deathbed you would simply be happy you tried, that's something really special.
    - heavenlyblue 7y ago
      Yeah, but it doesn’t mean these people deserve any pity. They actually did something they love. And the fact is they almost certainly knew the risks involved - it’s not like they were jumping into unknown.

agumonkey 7y ago

Sad, I loved the idea of bubble computing. I wonder if there are similar ideas with complex electric fields to model equation and enjoy "RT" (sampling speed time) evaluation of solutions.

JoBrad 7y ago
I guess the bubble popped early for that area of tech?
heavenlyblue 7y ago
Every time I hear about a sad story of "this scientist had spent their whole life trying to discover the better computing in DNA and failed" I feel like the reporters are not mentioning the fact that actually the scientist knew perfectly well that their model of computation was inherently unscalable and they were simply pulling money out of absolutely oblivious investors. Oh god I love the _idea_ of better computing. But let's be honest, there isn't much of an alternative, is there?
- saalweachter 7y ago
  At some point it becomes important to ask yourself, "What would I be content spending my life failing to accomplish?" I mean, it'd be nicer to accomplish it, but if you can find something that you could spend fifty years failing at, that on your deathbed you would simply be happy you tried, that's something really special.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    Yeah, but it doesn’t mean these people deserve any pity. They actually did something they love. And the fact is they almost certainly knew the risks involved - it’s not like they were jumping into unknown.