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It’s always interesting to compare to see how and why some of the hits and misses happen. The optimism is exaggerated, but overall there has been a sustained g

by simonh 3y ago

It’s always interesting to compare to see how and why some of the hits and misses happen. The optimism is exaggerated, but overall there has been a sustained global boom. The thing is the benefits have disproportionately accrued to modernising economies in the developing world. China, and much of East Asia has seen an incredible transformation. Catching up is always much easier than forging ahead. Genetic computing is obviously not a thing, genes are long terms storage, not processing. On the other hand while we don't compute biologically, all the latest advances in AI are based on neural networks, inspired by biological neurons. We’re not on Mars, and thinking back to 1998 I don’t see where that optimism came from. There was no indication of the technology or appetite for a project like that. It’s only with the advent of reusable rockets that it’s becoming viable. Nanotechnology was the big buzz back then, but it isn’t pushed that much in the article. Other futurists were making absurd claims of what would be possible in 5 years. Impressive restraint. China on the road to democracy, and a Russia modernising? Oh well. Both are on the list of major risks though. As a Brit it’s conflicting to see the optimism for us leading the way in Europe in the main article, and the fact that we basically opted for 10 on the risks list instead.

deleted 3y ago
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kevindamm 3y ago
> Genetic computing is obviously not a thing, genes are long terms storage, not processing. That's like saying the tape in Turing's machine is not computing. But if you include the RNA transcription and protein interactions and utilize the complementary base pairs, you can do processing. I recall seeing a paper where solving an NPC problem like Traveling Salesperson could be done with DNA chains being mixed and matched. There was a lot of excitement about this in the 90s and that was before we'd invented microchannels for faster codon analysis. But, to be clear, I don't think it's a computing area worth further investigation, I think the hype being built up during the development of the Human Genome Project, especially as they were building a lot of new tech and managed to finish sequencing two years ahead of schedule, got a lot of other industries excited. They were still years from completion in '97 but the biological process seemed like massively parallel compute that could scale faster than an effort to build the equivalent data centers.. EDIT: dug up an article in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/news000113-10 https://www.nature.com/articles/news000113-10 "DNA computer helps traveling salesman" in January 2000. Liu,Q., Wang, L., Frutos, A.G., Condon, A.E., Corn, R.M. & Smith, L.M. DNA computing on surfaces Nature 403, 175 2000.

by simonh 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kevindamm 3y ago

> Genetic computing is obviously not a thing, genes are long terms storage, not processing. That's like saying the tape in Turing's machine is not computing. But if you include the RNA transcription and protein interactions and utilize the complementary base pairs, you can do processing. I recall seeing a paper where solving an NPC problem like Traveling Salesperson could be done with DNA chains being mixed and matched. There was a lot of excitement about this in the 90s and that was before we'd invented microchannels for faster codon analysis. But, to be clear, I don't think it's a computing area worth further investigation, I think the hype being built up during the development of the Human Genome Project, especially as they were building a lot of new tech and managed to finish sequencing two years ahead of schedule, got a lot of other industries excited. They were still years from completion in '97 but the biological process seemed like massively parallel compute that could scale faster than an effort to build the equivalent data centers.. EDIT: dug up an article in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/news000113-10 https://www.nature.com/articles/news000113-10 "DNA computer helps traveling salesman" in January 2000. Liu,Q., Wang, L., Frutos, A.G., Condon, A.E., Corn, R.M. & Smith, L.M. DNA computing on surfaces Nature 403, 175 2000.