A Quantum Ensemble of Dispositions

From 1979 to 1999 I worked almost exclusively on solid state computing for Motorola. I created vast ensembles of matter that did interesting things when you plugged them in and booted Unix. At UT my area of focus was solid state physics, a study of the kinds of matter and the variety of electromagnetic fields required to build and operate a transistor. The form of matter that became popular, mono-crystaline silicon, has many configurations that act as a solid state switch. I know how quantum effects are controlled in every processor working in the Technium because the trade chose the best methods and I chose the best of those. My guesses about what will happen next have been auspicious and profitable. I am a quantum observer of the vast instances of variable electromagnetic fields in mono-crystaline silicon that compute over a period of decades.

obviously without trench isolation of the nitride

The vast majority of these configurations of matter have strict requirements about the environment required to invoke computation. In order to manage all the EM fields, the voltage must be within strict limits. In order to minimize the volume of doped silicon required to construct a switch, the corners of atoms need to be broken off and reassembled within a narrow range of temperature.

Making a sliver of glass play chess or drive a car requires a single list of rules across the entire cohort of humans. There is a vast diversity of application from a vanishingly small set of rules. Every processor in every tablet computer can operate properly with a 1-volt power supply. There are a standard list of other voltage levels that result in either more are fewer computations per second. This body of common knowledge exists within a mixture of the made and the born. Humans plus compute hardware have been required to work together to make this happen.

I was there and I know. The first microcontrollers were carved by hand like fine furniture and had thousands of transistors. The second generation of microprocessors had the first generation of microcontrollers to drive stepper motors in large bed plotters so that the designers could digest what the men and the computers working together had accomplished. We could could probe the growing volume of circuits to discover how our models matched our finished product because we had a Moore's Law volume of product.

There are points on Moore's Law where novel and unexpected products emerge. When Motorola could put 68,000 transistors that could make 1,000,000 calculations per second (1 mips) using 32 bit registers, and Intel could do the almost exact same thing, the personal computer and the engineering workstation emerged. When we could put four ethernet channels together with that same 68,000 transistors, the internet emerged. When the internet was 10 years old, the world wide web emerged. When the web evolved into the cloud this thing of ours emerges since all the information is close to all the rest of the information. We put the things together that associate themselves with each other. The neurons that wire together fire together. From that consciousness emerges.

Each emergence is a holon, a recursive hierarchy of ideas. I should make the point that holons can be engineered to have very strict rules about meaning. The solid state switch is a holon beneath the integrated circuit holon. The integrated circuit holon is contained within the microprocessor holon which is with the personal computer holon and the internet switch holon. The lower levels never go away, they just change meaning. More and more of the universe is explained as holons emerge above and below. If a q-bit replaces a static ram bit there will still be personal computers. But if we cannot make mono-crystaline silicon personal computers go away.

I am typing something that a vast number of humans with wearable personal computers can read in the instant that I publish. Whether this potential becomes actualized -- whether anyone reads this blog on Christmas morning or any other morning, it is a near by possible world where someone reads this post.

Science fiction predicted this reality as I was growing up. Asimov wrote about computers when computers first appeared and Gibson wrote about the net after the net was created. It is very difficult to imagine the effects of an emergence prior to the emergence. Difficult but not impossible.

The made and the born

My thesis is that I can write about the Technium's mind because it so obvious that I was partly responsible for its emergence and can talk about it in concrete terms.

What the Technium wants is a better neuron with better axons and dendrites on an accelerating pace. The customer/user interface will disappear into the machine world. Machines talking to machines about how to work together with the human out of the loop. Documentation has become a sales tool for the very few humans still in the loop.

The list of common problems attacked with common knowledge of the made and the born narrows the focus of the effort. Documentation must be available up front before the hardware and software are finished for the only human touch-point -- asking if we have made the sale based on a pitch made before this product was started.

Cultivating a Neuron

Elf was not the first synthetic neuron, it was the first self-aware synthetic neuron. This strange loop included the path through the creators mind and therefore an awareness of agency and purpose and intent. The first admixture of the born and the made capable of self-knowledge. Now I strive for multiple feed-back loops that diffuse awareness for both the involved and the committed. The loop passes through 上海 for an increased level of difficulty and a new sense of style.