In his interesting and informative 2001 book MIND AT LIGHT SPEED:A NEW KIND OF INTELLIGENCE, David D. Nolte details how the dawn of vast new world wide fiber optic networks has created the basis for a whole new type of computing based upon the principles of laser/optic design and super high speed data transmission rates occurring literally at the speed of light. Interestingly enough of of the major bottlenecks according to this author are achieving the kinds of breakthroughs neccessary in the field of semiotic research and cognitive psychology that will enable light speed computers to mimic and even far surpass basic optimal human brain functioning. The posibility of a manufactued devise actually having real intelligence and even a unique consciousness of its own seems to be possibly on the event horizon. I'm not so sure that anyone is really prepared mentally, spiritually, emotionally, or even intelectually for that kind of a possibility. Since this book is not six years out of date one can only speculate on what the real state of things may be in regard to the advanced research being done in this field.

A HAL in the making. Given the present primitive and almost paganic orders that permeates most all societies and I do mean ALL. It will have to take an exceptional computer devoid of all human related forms of a human's "intelligence". If the past determines the present the picture is pretty grim. It took several millenia for what was created under the formulaes that made up "algebra" and related sciences for the likes of a homo sapien or two {galileo, newton, einstien, etc,.] to develop an intelligence capable of understanding it as a prelude to expounding and application.

Is speed reaally of the essence?

A HAL in the making. "Given the present primitive and almost paganic orders that permeates most all societies and I do mean ALL".-Yes, I have to aggree that given the anti-traditional orientation of contemprary societies influenced as they are by the anti-traditional spirit of the west such an advent in the making can only be characterized as Satanic. However, more to the point is the fact that perhaps such an intelligent system already exists. That high order of intelligence is known as the Cosmos/Universe. Its hardware is beyond the reach of mere mortals but perhaps the ancient essoteric secrets of past civilizations may give some clue as to what kind of software applications will work or not work. Of course it goes without saying that such considerations are benith consideration in by the vulgar materialist mindset of the West. The link between mind and matter is a much neglected area of real scientific inquirely. That is where the answer lies! Such connections can only exist at the quantum level however the possibilites here are quite dizzying in the extreme. Traditional science as practiced in the East has much to offer in this realm that is almost foreign to the West.

Hi All,

Speed is relative to what you want to do. Most current computers are vastly over powered for the average user. You need the speed when you get into video editing, vector graphics and other computationally intensive tasks. Even then the "speed" of the computer has not as much to do with the processor speed as its availability to access memory and storage. Microsoft Vista is a resource hog needing about two gigabytes to use all the "advanced" features.

The current bottleneck is between the hard drive and RAM. We have lots of capacity in hard drives but it is still about 1000 times slower to access data on the hard drive than it is RAM. Even with hard drives spinning at 15,000 RPM and 16 megabyte caches, that is the limiting factor. We would get a greater practical increase in speed and efficiency by working on the hard drive-motherboard interface. That might be a better use for optics than getting an optical general purpose processor.

Bigbird

Technology is just a projection of our own inner capabilities as human beings.

That is why more and more computer designs and other high tech toys employed by our civilization can also serve as analogues of how the mind functions.

Mind itself is something that technolgists will never be able to gets their's around until they come to see the truth of one famous physicist's quip that "a physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."