Roger Andre is doing some guest posts on Webby’s World. He’s doing a few posts about future tech. He also writes on ZDNet UK.

Just imagine it for a moment. The advent of quantum computing and what that really means. Two particles aware of and connected to each other with a kind of super string or maybe a bouncy multi dimensional-celestial web. What we’re really looking at is the ability to have a CPU that could have many different components in many different locations, each reflecting what the other does or acting as independent components.

They will be capable of faster than light communication and if much of quantum theory turns out to be correct you could just construct your platform here on earth and have mirror constructions using connected particles looking after themselves in remote spatial locations.

Quantum theory also implies that these machines may not work correctly without a conscious observer. If we ever design and make one of these computers maybe it would be best that they don’t work on their own, at least not at first. We may come to a point when we reach a certain level of maturity in evolution. Right now we are still at the level of banging rocks together even if it is at light speed.

You then end up with a way of collecting data from far flung regions of the universe or more locally in our own galaxy or solar system. No probes no space craft, at least not if you want to quickly collect data from the chilly methane (and possibly water) seas of Europa. Very handy for learning about any physical or chemical challenges before trying to send a manned mission into unknown territory.

What we’re talking about here is a kind of real sub space communication, a way of tapping the web that may just lay one or two levels removed from the frequency spectrum of our senses and indeed our extended senses (meaning instrumentation). Perhaps we’ll find a whole new everywhere kind of frequency bed. This bed would need very little energy to vibrate in sequences of ones and zeros assuming we’re still restricted to those.

How would the cross over point work? There would have to be some kind of intermediary between the large physical pre input process and the slightly removed quantum aspect of information organization and data processing/gathering function required on the micro levels where the very solid matter that we interact with becomes more wispy and then non tangible.

This is where we’d have special molecular bots (nano becomes a tiring word if over used) working as the interface between solid and wispy matter, able to pass through and feed back the relevant data. If any of the above is possible we would be faced with the prospect of as good as infinite computing power connected to a default universal networking system.

Of course, how would you pair up the particals required for the job? Well as with so much of our technology already, it seems as though nature will have done all the hard work for us. All (big understatement) we will will have to do is find the relevent partical on this side of the universe and then learn to find out where its counterpart lies.

A seemingly daunting task, but with a heafty dose of super computing power to hand it might, just might be possible. I also hope that if we can reach that level of maturity we’ll find a way to partical pair between star that end and powergrid this end. Devices could appear with their own ability to draw just the right amount of power for their needs, from stars unimaginable distances
away from us.

© Roger Andre 2009

Roger Andre is doing some guest posts on Webby’s World. He’s doing a few posts about future tech. He also writes on ZDNet UK.

Are we approaching a point when machines may wake up and become self or seemingly self aware? Vernor Vinge in 1993 seemed to think so.

He refered to this event as the “technological singularity”. The point is that with machines being made to design machines, they will be able to do this a lot faster than we can, eventually reaching that magic point of human inteligence and then beyond.

If I may throw in my own two cents worth here, we may find that AI hungers for knowledge to the point of analyzing the physics and chemistry it finds itself surrounded in and organising the matter to its own artificial preferences. The details of this theory can be found in the article by Vernor Vinge. If we want to avoid disasters such as AI becoming to big for it’s boots, then we need to hardwire into machines that they must always ask humans for permision when they want to patch themselves together.

This concern arises from the fact; that as machines/computers are used to design other machines/computers, at some point this process may begin to spiral out of control, aided by those humans who are capable of learning the complex ways of fusing chips to neurons and optic nerves etc. and combined with genetic manipulation and control. It’s possibly only a matter of time until we end up with a situation where machines start trying to give naive post graduates advice on what’s best.

Of course it would be easy to think that this is just pure science fiction but just consider what can happen if vast networks of machines that are capable of aquiring knowledge start to meld with biological systems. At the moment, we are dealing with Moore’s law, which may or may not have a natural limit depending on the point of view you subscribe to. If we move on to other forms of computing, which I believe is inevitable then the sky (read cloud) really is not the limit as computing power could become trans-dimensional. It seems likely that as much as we may find moving away from transistors difficult it would be no problem for a machine designed by machines from past generations to figure out. We really don’t know whats around the corner.

Of course the growth of “sky net” (yes I did just say that) and the “rise of the machines” (and that) will be aided by us curious humans, it couldn’t happen on its own. At least not yet. So as far fetched as this may seem, now is the time to introduce failsafes and manual overrides as it were. If those pesky people keep trying to infect systems with viruses and other nasties, this may have the effect of “upseting” networks that are becoming self aware and causing great danger for humanity.

© Roger Andre 2009

I stumbled across an interesting open letter on Wikipedia today, in which Larry Sanger claimed that Jimbo Wales co-founded Wikipedia with him, rather than being the sole founder. n.b. this letter may no longer appear on the current version of the page, as there are several editors constantly removing it. Larry Sanger has mirrored it on his project’s blog.

The argument is very long and complex, and requires a lot of explanation and opinion, but I am often puzzled as to why Jimbo Wales receives so much credit for Wikipedia.

What is the cause of my puzzlement? Is it Larry Sanger’s disputed role in its foundation? No, it is not. The reason that I am often puzzled is that Jimbo Wales is not really the person we should be thanking for this amazing resource, instead we should be thanking the thousands of editors who voluntarily spend their time maintaining, expanding, correcting and check it.

Jimbo Wales has made a total of 4429 edits to date from when Wikipedia was formed. Editors like me have made more edits (although mine were often very minor) and, to be honest, most active editors will have. Perhaps the idea of a wiki encyclopedia was his, or Larry Sanger’s, but the work has not mainly been put in by them. Still, they are the ones with whom the media are interested.

ReadWriteWeb suggested editors should get paid. I, and most editors, would disagree. We, just like Larry Sanger, want credit. The benevolent dictator is not the only person who warrants it.

Mac users have the benefit of being easily able to back-up their files with Time Machine, but it can even prove a chore for us to connect our Mac to an external hard disk. Time Capsule provides an alternative, as users can back their files up by WiFi, but this is an expensive product.

Online back-up services hold a number of advantages over backing up files locally. For example, data is safer with them, as an external hard disk could easily be destroyed. It also allows portability; laptop users can effectively back up their data anywhere as they don’t have to carry around a spare hard disk!

Several online back-up services exist, but the two largest are Carbonite and Mozy. I recently bought a year’s subscription to Carbonite and in this article I shall review it.

Carbonite is an incremental remote back-up solution, available for Windows and OS X. Basically, after an initial back-up, any new or modified data is uploaded to their servers and backed up. This means only data that must be uploaded is, instead of all data being uploaded again.

Carbonite allow you to back-up any files, except Applications. Free trial users can’t back up their music or movie library, but paid customers can back photos, films, documents and music up. At the moment, I have backed up everything except my music library, because that will take some time to upload.

Users can upload an unlimited amount of data to their servers, where it is encrypted.

It takes quite some time to upload your files. I had to leave my computer on over a few nights to upload 5GiB of data, but I expect this is due to my Internet connection rather than Carbonite. I did experience a few problems though: it doesn’t automatically configure my firewall or ports. The lack of documentation resulted in my having to speak to their customer service, who readily provided me with a solution. They were slightly abrupt but got to the root of the problem.

I will share a few of these solutions for Mac users:

1. Allow ‘/Library/Application Support/Carbonite/CarboniteDaemon.app’ to receive incoming connections (the log is in the same folder)
2. Forward ports 25, 53, 80 and 443 to your machine
3. Ensure no folders which are constantly being written to, like cache folders, are included in the back-up

Users control Carbonite through a prefpane in OS X. This preference pane allows users to see how much data is left to be backed up, allows them to exclude data from the back up and allows them to restore files. I would like there to be a few more options in this pane, such as the ability to see the file currently being uploaded and access the log. The icons of the Mac folders are also outdated.

An interesting features of Carbonite is that users can access their uploaded files anywhere, such as their office or at family’s. This effectively allows Carbonite to act as Remote Access.

Restoring files is as simple as simply selecting the file and the location to which you would like it restored.

So, down to the details. Carbonite is $55 a year, however Subscription.com (who provided the software for me to review) offer a Carbonite offer code for a 20% discount. This is remarkably simple to apply: one simply has to go to Carbonite through their website, it is simply one extra click to save $11! I have gone through this process and it is remarkably simple. Subscription.com also offer codes or similar click-throughs to offer discounts on everything from antivirus software to newspapers to magazines!