Dream-Net, the network of world’s dreams

Scientists at the University of Berkeley have developed a system that can capture the visual activity of human brain and implement it as a digital video. In the future, this process could be used to record and reconstruct dreams on a computer.

“This is a big step in terms of reconstructing internal images. We open a window to the movies in our minds”, said Jack Gallant, professor at Berkeley University.
This is a story I’ve read the other day on gizmodo.com

I’ve got an idea a while ago about this story. What if we could go online only with our thoughts ? Obviously, we could not do that as long as we are awake, but only at night when we’re sleeping. Or if we are sleeping during the day.

In information technology there are two types of realities: virtual reality, one that is distinguishable from the real world, and simulated reality, i.e. the one we cannot distinguish between real world and the simulated world. For example a movie.

In the first category, virtual reality is produced by computers based on silicon processor, with a computing power and a way of working lower than the biological brain. An example of virtual reality is provided by Second Life, or other computer games.

In the second category, the simulated reality is produced so far only by the biological brain, namely the dream. Because of huge computational power of the human brain, which is around 10¹⁴, that is, a hundred thousand trillion operations per second, but mostly because of the way in which the brain works, i.e. parallel calculations, so far the only computer that could do such calculations, is the quantum computer. But this is only the beginning. According to Moore’s law, it is estimated that computer paradigm will change starting with the years 2016-2017. This law says that the number of transistors that can be placed on a silicon chip, will reach the physical limit in the years mentioned above. Then, quantum computers swill emerge on a large scale, and therefore the simulated reality on a commercial scale, i.e. the metaverse, as expected be Neal Stephenson in 1992, who was saying that this environment will be the successor of the Internet. We will be able to get in the metaverse using simulated reality, made with the help of BCIs (Brain-Computer Interfaces).

Perhaps in this network, we will meet each other with the desired look, in the desired environment.. It will be a real dream world … I have even given it a name: Dream-Net.

Noosphere: the forthcoming internet

I have seen many ideas that places the Internet of future, in the same configuration as it is now: a worldwide network of computers based on the nodes. And perhaps it will be so, only these nodes of computers will not have the current structure based on PCs but on quantum one, with a human brain structure.

The pace at which information technology is currently developing, we’ll get by the middle of this century, to spend our lives in the virtual world. That’s the trend of evolution.

Life has evolved from simplicity, reaching more complex objects that have specialized cells in processing information: neurons. These in turn were combined into more complex forms resulting the brain, which is the central nervous system, from which the orders for the body consisting of hands, feet, ears, and so on, are given.
The brain (the hard drive), operates through a highly complex software – the mind. More and more people are concerned with neurotechnology, namely, modeling of artificial structures that emulate exactly our human brain.

In about 20 years, this will be done, and only then a human consciousness will be able to live in cyberspace, and only from time to time to walk in the real world. This course of social evolution will bring a shift in the legislative paradigm, because humans will be able to live in several places simultaneously: in the real one (biosphere) and in the virtual one (noosphere). This means that if today, humans can think only on one channel, or two, as Napoleon, who could write a text and talk to someone at the same time, “the quantum man” will have thousands or millions of simultaneous channels of thought. That will be as if all the world’s cameras would be eyes, and we will be able to see with all these eyes in the same time.

The emergence of technology is nothing but the continuity of the evolution of the biological matter wich gave rise to thinking (brain) and this led to an increase in evolution towards new forms: the exosomatic organs of the human body, namely the external organs of our bodies that are nothing but tools. These exosomatic organs (tools) are the result of the ever faster process of development, much as the explosion of life in the geological time called Cambrian.

In the 21st century, humans will transfer its conscience in the noosphere, i.e. in the virtual world, using technology as organs, and the system of the global technology will form the technosphere. But this is only the beginning of progress in this little corner of the Universe, because in reality, man will extend in the entire Cosmos turning it into thinking matter. This procees has already begun through telecommunications satellites or space probes.

Internetic brain

By the number of IPs, in 2009, around the globe there were 605.6 million Internet-connected computers. For 2011, it is estimated that this number will increase to about 4.29 billion units connected to the global network. This source can be found here.

This shows that the number of the computers in the global network called Internet, is greater than the number of neurons that make up the brains of some animals. For example, an ant has 10 000 neurons, a cockroach has about 1 million neurons, a dog has 160 million, and a cat has about 300 million neurons. The number of connections (synapses) between neurons in the brain, shows the level of intelligence of its “owner”. The higher the number, the more intelligent the brain is. Human brain is composed of about 100 billion neurons, each with 10,000 synapses that connect neurons with thier neighbors, i.e. a total of 1 000 000 billion (10¹⁵) synapses, which leads to a total computing power of the brain of 10¹⁴ operations per second.

Imagine that each computer is the equivalent of a neuron. To find out how many links are present between all existing computers in the world wide web, we need to use Metcalfe’s formula: n(n-1)/2, where n is the number of computers.

If we take n = 4290000000, namely the number of computers connected to the Internet, estimated for 2011, it means that the formula would be like this:

n = 4 290 000 000 ٠ 4 289 999 999/2 = 9 202 049 997 855 000 000

This means that, among all the computers that will be connected to the Internet in 2011, there will be 9 202 049 997 855 000 000 links. This shows that it ia a much higher number than the connections (synapses) of the human brain, namely, about 10¹⁹.

What will happen if someone will come up with the idea to create a general program for the entire Internet, to make the global network behave exactly like the human brain ? Will the world network become …intelligent ?

The fourth paradigm of information

First, let me clarify what is a paradigm.

Since almost everyone knows football, let’s take an example from this area. We can oftenly hear that a team played only on attack, and the other team only on defence. This shows that to achieve its goal, one team used a type of approach to the game (a paradigm) and the other team has used another method (a different paradigm).
Therefore, a paradigm is an approach to a concept.

The world of knowledge has always wished to have the ability to solve problems more rapidly. For this, many sharp minds have thought how to do to satisfy this need. It is well known the case of Blaise Pascal, who in 1642 built the first mechanical computing machine which he called the Pascaline. This was the first paradigm of computing machines: the mechanical machines.

In 1946, ENIAC occured (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), the first electric computer based on vacuum tubes, a machine that belonged to the United States Army. It was expected, that in the decades that would follow, America would need no more than 6 such electronic computing devices. These machines, which were no more based on mechanical calculations, have brought the second paradigm: the electric machines based on vacuum tubes.

These computers could not resist too much either, because in 1953, at the University of Manchester, in England, Transistor Computer was created, the first computer based on transistors. However, the first commercial computer wich operated on transistors principle, went into operation in 1955, being produced by the people at IBM. Then, since 1958, with the emergence of integrated circuites that began to get more and more miniaturized, we’ve got to the emergence of microchips in 1971. And so, the world of informations passed to a new paradigm, the third one: that of computing machines with transistors and microchips.

According to Moore’s law, things will not stop here. Perhaps in the coming decades, things will move to the new paradigm, the fourth: quantum computers, which will represent a revolution not only in the world of computers, but a revolution in human civilization, because with the advent of quantum computers, with computing power billion times higher than today’s most powerful supercomputer, will lead to artificial intelligence, above that of the humans.

Moore’s law

Moore’s Law describes an important trend in the field of hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed cheaply on an integrated circuit, increases exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.
This observation was first made ​​by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in 1965. The trend has continued for more than half a century, and is not expected to stop by at least another decade or more.
Almost any measurable parameter of a technical equipment is linked to Moore’s Law: processing speed, memory capacity, even the resolution of digital cameras.
According to Moore’s law, it is estimated that in approximately 20 to 30 years, computers will exceed human brain in computing power, which is approximately 10 operations per second.
In 35 years, from about 1,000 transistors on a silicon chip, as many as a processor had, back in 1970, in 2005 they counted about one billion.

In our brain, we have 100 billion neurons, multiplied by 1 000 connections per neuron (the calculations taking place primarily in connection) multiplied by 200 operations per second.

In his book, The law of accelerating returns Raymond Kurzweil concludes that the emergence of the Universe, and especially the emergence of life on Earth, it’s been exponential (even double-exponential), and not linear.

Extrapolating Moore’s law, Kurzweil concludes that in the next 100 years of the 21^st century, we will witness an evolution comparable to that of the previous 20,000 years, if this exponential curve is maintained. This is because once the computers will exceed human brain performance, they will be able to self-improve, maintaining exponential growth of computing speed. The result is that scientific and technical progress will see an increasingly higher acceleration. These computers will then be able to figure out very quickly almost all the secrets of nature and the Universe.

This ultrafast technological leap, will lead to almost unimaginable events of the Homo sapiens species: the fusion between biological and non-biological intelligence, (mind uploading), almost immortal people, and high levels of superintelligence, which will quickly spread throughout the entire Universe. This is why the term singularity is used: the human species cannot possibly understand what will happen (black hole), as well as bacteria cannot understand what man is, so great will be the scientific and technical progress.

All this will be done with quantum computers which are in the process of development at IBM laboratories or in Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Quantum computers

Quantum computers are not very different from normal ones in terms of the work they do. But, they are fundamentally different when we analyze the method of how they perform calculations. At the base of a quantum computer, lays the quantum theory of Schrödinger’s equation, which says that a particle can be simultaneously up and down, right and left, as a body may be alive and dead simultaneously.

A classical computer, operates units of information called bits. Each bit of an ordinary computer can only have one value: 0 or 1. Just as, for example, a bulb may be either turned on or turned off, or a statement is either true or false, or that an object can be either up or down. No matter how many bits a classical computer has, it can only take one value in order to make programs run.

A quantum computer is totally different, because it is based on two principles of the quantum theory: entanglement and superposition. In the quantum world, impossible becomes normal.

Quantum entanglement is a strange phenomenon, observed in the subatomic particles that can remain connected even when they are at long distance from each other. Any action upon one particle, will have repercussions upon the other, as if the particles would not be separated, these particles remaining connected to each other, even if they are at opposite ends of the universe. According to entanglement, quantum theory says that whatever happens in one part of the universe, may have immediate effects on the other part, regardless of any distance. In our ordinary world, this is impossible.
This phenomena of entanglement, will be used in quantum computers to replace materials circuits with quantum circuits, through which information will be transmitted instantly, without loss of energy.

And the same is with superposition. It isn’t easier to understand either. We all remember from high school the wave-particle duality, namely, an elementary particle, eg photon, is both a particle and a wave.
A particle can also be in superposition with another particle, i.e., two particles can occupy the same place at the same time. This means that an elementary particle can take the values ​​0 or 1, or 0 and 1 simultaneously. This type of state that a quantum particle can take was called qubit (quantum bit).

The more qubits we have, the more possibilities of calculation. Since we are dealing with superposition, this means that several positions may be filled simultaneously. While an 8-bit (1 byte) computer can only take one position out of 256 generated by these 8 bits, a quantum computer using 8 bits, can occupy all of these 256 positions at the same time.
A quantum computer with n qubits can be in 2ⁿ different states of superposition, compared with a classical computer, which can only be in one position of these 2ⁿ states.

To understand how strange this subatomic behavior is, I will again resort to analogies. If a bulb in a room would be in superposition, it would be turned on and off at the same time. Or, a statement to be true and false simultaneously. Or, an object to be up and down comcomitently, but what’s even stranger is that the particle can be in the past and present …at the same time. This shows the strangeness of a quantum computer, because information will be processed, and the results will be obtained, before being required to do so, or, given that a qubit can take the values ​​of open/closed simultaneously, the quantum computer can process information …even when when it is turned off. This strange phenomenon was observed by researchers at the University of Michigan.

Thinking at the Bremermann’s limit, which says that the maximum mass of a gram of an informational system, can process more than 2 ۰ 10⁴⁷ bits of information, i.e. 20 … followed by 47 zeros, a computer with a gram of matter which is able to process that amount of information, is unimaginable today.

But if this is something unimaginable, then what will be by the year 2100, when Raymond Kurzweil says that perhaps, technological progress will have been reached so far, that human civilization will turn the entire Earth into a giant computer, namely to make it intelligent, so humans will no longer need to work it, but to bear fruits itself, to raise buildings itself, to support themselves, to control its atmospheric, geological or hydrological processes, using energy from within. If the computing power of a gram is 2 ۰ 10⁴⁷ bits, then how great will be the computing power of the whole Earth, which is 6 ۰ 10²⁴ grams ?

What is a Quantum Computer ?

Quantum computers are not that different from normal computers outwardly, but they are in the sense that quantum theory is the basis on which these computers operate. The end result is that they are put together in a completely different way.

A normal computer operates on the basis of units known as bits. Each byte in a normal computer can only be one of 0 or 1 and nothing else. No matter how many bytes you have, each computer at a single point in time can only occupy one combination of these bytes in order for the programming to actually work.

A quantum computer is different from this because of a principle in quantum mechanics known as superposition. If you think back to your high school science courses, you may have learned about superposition when looking at how waves like light and sound waves move from one point to another. Quanta can also be in superposition with respect to each other and the end result is that the quantum bits that make up the computer can actually be 0, 1 or both, in the same time.

The more quantum bits (also known as qubits) you have, the more possibilities they are. Because you are dealing with superposition, it also means that the different positions can be occupied simultaneously. Whereas a simple 8-bit computer can only occupy one of the 256 positions generated by those 8 bits at once, the same 8-bit quantum computer could occupy all 256 qubit positions at once.

The end result is that quantum computers can be much more efficient than their conventional computer counterparts. Although quantum computers are still in their infancy, as the technology improves eventually it will become true that these computers will be able to calculate faster than the computers we have today. When that happens, the 3.0 GHz speed of a personal computer that we brag about now will be nothing in comparison to the new quantum computer models that become available on the market.

Gordon Moore and his law

۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰

I’m looking back about five years ago, in 2005, when I was searching on the internet to see how things are at the highest level of personal computers. And I found that the best result at that time was the 2005 PC (Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965) which had two cores, a “huge” 2 GB of RAM, a 300 GB storage capacity, and a 3.73 GHz computing power microprocessor, i.e. 3.73 billions operations per second.

Five years have passed, and again, I took a look and see how things are in the world of PCs now, in 2010, and I found that after five years, things have changed damatically: the “best” PC has six brains (processors) with 3.33 GHz, 12 GB of RAM … or 24, depending on how much money we have, and 2 TB storage capacity on HDD …! (click here to see more). That’s a progress ! And in only five years !

Cyber Power-Xtreme-3D-3000

After seeing this situation, Mr. Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel Company, immediately came to mind, who in 1965 made the following statement: computational power increases exponentially as the number of transistors placed on a integrated circuit doubles every 18 months. This trend will continue until about 2015.

What will follow after 2015 ? Will the quantum computers advance, and surpass the computing power of the human brain which is currently about 100 000 billion operations per second (100,000 GHz) ? Is Raymond Kurzweil right, who argues that the Singularity is near ?

Singularity is a term taken by Vernor Vinge in 1993, from the field of astronomical black holes, and designates the moment when computers have surpassed the human brain in computing power, a time after we will no longer be able to predict the course of the human history.

Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels are alleged to have mysteriously disappeared in a manner that cannot be explained by human error, piracy, equipment failure, or natural disasters. Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to the paranormal, a suspension of the laws of physics, or activity by extraterrestrial beings.

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VGA (Video Graphics Array) is a basic standard for color resolution in computer monitors that, today, represents the lowest common denominator for compatibility. For example, when a computer boots into the Microsoft™ Windows™ operating system, the opening splash screen or Windows logo is presented in VGA mode using a palette of 32 colors and a resolution of 640 x 480. Once the system is fully loaded, the video card’s device driver takes over at a higher resolution.

Although it would be a few years before IBM released another formal video standard, other video card manufacturers quickly began producing cards that could support higher resolutions and color depths than IBM’s VGA standard. These various capabilities were informally called “Super VGA” modes, which over time came to mean “anything better than 640 x 480 at 16 colors.” (Eventually, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) helped consolidate these disparate standards and produced a “Super VGA” standard programming interface that included, among other things, a defined 800 x 600 at 16 colors resolution.)

IBM’s next standard of note was called “XGA”, which offered a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 with 256 colors. It could also produce 640 x 480 resolutions with what was at the time a stunning 65,536 colors.

Since that time, continued improvements in technology have pushed resolutions higher and higher, with increasing color depths. Along with these improvements has come a slew of acronyms to define them, which are shown in the table below. In practice, most of these acronyms are rarely used, and the terms “VGA” and “Super VGA” (or “SVGA”) are used instead.

So, why does a cable company worry about different video standards ? Well, as one would expect, higher resolutions and color depths mean more data going through a cable. In fact, the original VGA cables used when IBM developed the VGA standard are no longer appropriate for modern resolutions. Most of us in the cable industry are careful to differentiate between the informal terms “VGA cable” and “SVGA cable,” which have physically different constructions.

A traditional VGA cable was fairly simple. It consisted of 14 or 15 28 AWG (28 gauge) wires in a jacket, with 15 pin connectors on either end. These cables, still in use today on older equipment, are suitable for the relatively low resolutions of the original VGA standard.

However, it quickly became clear, as resolutions were increased, that a new cable design was going to be necessary. Recognizing that the most critical data flowing through the cable is the red, green, and blue color data, super VGA cables (which are sometimes marketed as “XGA cables”) were designed to minimize any interference from compromising the signal along those lines.

Rather than just using a pair of wires (one for signal, one for ground) for each color channel – as had previously been done with traditional VGA cables – the newer SVGA cables were designed with three miniature coaxial wires inside the main cable. (Coax cable is a broad term referring to any cable that has a center pin delivering data, surrounded by insulating material and one or more shields that provide grounding and mitigate external interference.) Well-constructed SVGA cables are cable of carrying high resolutions (up to 2048 x 1536) at distances up to 100 feet without external amplification.

When purchasing these cables, you should always take care to purchase Super VGA cables, not standard VGA cables, unless you know for absolute certainty that you will only ever run a low-resolution device. Even then, it is probably advisable to stick with Super VGA cables, to ensure that the cable you purchase today will continue to work into the future.