michaelerule
Member 1242
103 entries
106084 views

 RSS
Michael Rule (M, 26)
Pittsburgh, US
Immortal since Dec 25, 2007
Uplinks: 0, Generation 3
( related blog / mirror )
All original media ( images, animations, videos, writing ) on this account is licensed creative commons non-commercial attribution share alike 3.0. Please contact the author (mrule7404 at gmail dot com) for permission for commercial use.
  • Affiliated
    •  /  
  • Invited
    •  /  
  • Descended
    • michaelerule’s favorites
    From abhominal
    Biostructure
    From feanne
    grow, grow
    From Andy Gilmore
    =========
    From feanne
    Venus, peacock moss, earth...
    From sarahs
    FINAL PRESENTATION
    Recently commented on
    From michaelerule
    ∞ zoom
    From gamma
    Ducks fractals
    From michaelerule
    Limitless Enhancement
    From michaelerule
    Sun
    From Queston
    Physicists describe method...
    Now playing SpaceCollective
    Where forward thinking terrestrials share ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction. Introduction
    Featuring Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, based on an idea by Kees Boeke.
    From michaelerule's personal cargo

    Is Spacecollective actually [what it claims to be (it's not clear what I mean here (probably time-capsule))] : is the string "immortal since " anything more than a nod to the site theme of futurism? Since spacecollective is free, I assume it can't afford multiple redundant backups, or guarantee continued hosting past the end of civilization. I do not have any grasp of how stable "the Internet" is. I assume people keep mirrors of Wikipedia and other major data sites, and Google has cached copies of (some) websites. I assume most of the original media hosted here is mirrored on personal websites. I do not imagine that the images or text in most of these accounts (especially this one) are of species-level significance. This relates to the question 'If we can achieve digital sentience and immortality by uploading, why should future generations spare the Joules to keep our personalities running'. I'm sure there is more to be said on this topic (actually, several science fiction works have treated the subject ), but I'm feeling particularly lazy today.


    Sat, May 22, 2010  Permanent link

      RSS for this post
    8 comments
      Promote (1)
      
      Add to favorites
    Create synapse
     
    Comments:


    nagash     Sun, May 23, 2010  Permanent link
    I think you misunderstood it all. the string "immortal since XXXX" refers to the fact that, after becoming a SC member, you cannot die anymore. and that I know for sure, as after joining this website I was hit by a Bus and got shot 3 times, with no effect : )
    michaelerule     Sun, May 23, 2010  Permanent link
    Thats quite good to know, but I don't expect to make it to the singularity, ( and Kurzweil sure isn't going to make it... but don't let him catch on ).
    aeonbeat     Mon, May 31, 2010  Permanent link
    shot 3 times?
    AsylumSeaker     Fri, Jun 4, 2010  Permanent link
    I suspect in another 100 years the amount of data taken up by the present day internet will fit into somebodies mobile phone. Someone will probably back it up, even if it's just by accident.
    michaelerule     Sat, Jun 5, 2010  Permanent link
    — Assuming 4x10^19 bits of data on the internet

    Assuming a hopelessly optimistic storage strategy of a silicon lattice where the presence of an atom indicates a 1, absence 0, and assuming each silicon atom is 271*10^-12 meters across, and our data is stored in a cube, I get : ( (4*10^19)^(1/3) )*(271*10^-12) * 1000 = ~ 1mm^2

    This should be taken as a reasonable good lower bound for the volume of a molecular storage mechanism for the internet. In practice, atomic scale data storage will be error prone and therefore require redundancy. Read hardware will add additional spatial overhead, even more if you want to be able to write to it. Furthermore, all current fabrication methods are 2D which severely limits the density of readable storage in a third dimension.

    how about some more practical order of magnitude guesses :

    Using the wiki figure of 1Tbit/in^2 as thh maximum theoretical density of perpendicular magnetic storage, (4 * (10^19)) / (10^12) = 40000000 in^2 = 6.37 acres of magnetic storage. Assuming you could stack this at 1 mm we're still looking at 26 m^3 for the storage volume ( 6812 US gallons, for more pointless unit conversion ). At what I suspect is an unrealistically optimistic stacking distance of 1µm, this still takes a cube 30cm on each edge. Thats small enough to keep in your office.

    IBM has some recording tech that can do 10x10nm bumps. So, lets call that 100nm^2/bit. ( (4*10^19) bits ) * ( 100 nm^2 / bit ) = 4000m^2 = about 1 acre. This packs to 4m^3 at 1mm spacing. If you can pack layers at 1um ( optimistic ), I get a cube ~15cm on each edge. I could carry that in a backpack.

    For DNA, using 2.6x2.6x0.33nm^2 per base ( two bits ) I get about 10mm^3. Now, THAT looks promising. Maybe High density DNA storage media are the future, though I'd hate to see the data retrieval times. Even something at 100, 1000, 10000 times bigger could still fit in your pocket.

    I wonder if anyone is researching polymer data storage tech ( that is, the data is contained in the functional groups on a polymer backbone ) ? This would seem to be "where it is at" in terms of raw information density.



    michaelerule     Sat, Jun 5, 2010  Permanent link
    Actually, I think polymer storage can achieve a much higher density than my silicon-lattice lower bound guess ( so much for todays thought experiments ). I guess a more appropriate lower bound on molecular storage would consider that you can use more than one molecule, maybe form a metallic lattice with 8+ elements per lattice points so you can store multiple bits at each lattice point.

    Consider the 21 amino acids at ~4.4 bits per residue in a protein polymer. I don't really know the volume of a single amino acid, lets just say its 1nm^3, so that gives you about a 2x2x2 mm cube. I bet there is some interesting way, using redundancy, and an amazing pile of bio-nanotech, to store and retrieve data in dissolved polymers. Perhaps this will achieve your "all the internet in your cell-phone" information density.

    Perhaps we could use a polymer with even greater diversity of functional groups, perhaps storing up to 7 or 8 bits per nm^3. Then the entire internet could fit, several times over, in your cell-phone.

    so, in conclusion : more funding for bio-nanotech !
    michaelerule     Wed, Jun 9, 2010  Permanent link
    update :

    a super high-density storage medium is proposed here
    AsylumSeaker     Thu, Jun 17, 2010  Permanent link
    Cheers for the info michaelerule.
     
          Cancel