Slashdot had several interesting items in its email digest for Monday, 17-OCT-2011. The first one that intrigued me was the claim future computers won't be "artificial intelligence" as much as they'll be "artificial consciousness"; article here:
What really piqued my curiosity, however, was another aspect of nanotechnology where circuits can be reconfigured on the fly per the following article:
First 4 paragraphs are below; article continues at above URL:
Future mobile devices may be able to reconfigure themselves to meet new demands, according to researchers that have developed a nanomaterial that can "steer" electrical currents. The discovery could lead to the development of smartphones and devices that can reconfigure their internal 'wiring' and evolve into an entirely different and new device, to reflect the changing needs of consumers.
With smartphones getting smaller and smaller, the materials from which the circuits are constructed begin to lose their properties and are more likely to be controlled by quantum mechanical phenomena, according to the research team from Northwestern University in Michigan. As devices reach this physical barrier, scientists have begun building circuits in three dimensions, by stacking components on top of one another. This technique was pioneered by Intel earlier this year.
However, the team said that it has taken a fundamentally different approach be making reconfigurable electronic materials that can rearrange themselves to meet different computational needs at different times.
The team is aiming to create a single device able to reconfigure itself into a resistor, a rectifier, a diode and a transistor based on signals from a computer. The multi-dimensional circuitry could be reconfigured into new electronic circuits using a varied input sequence of electrical pulses, the team said.
***** Moderator's Note *****George Jetson might get to see this, but it sounds a bit far-fetched to be useful today.
Bill Horne Moderator