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http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Fermilab_s... The link above is to a fermi lab program to look for Dyson spheres. The Matrioshka brain is a subset of the Dyson sphere. Something made famous, unfortunately, by Trekkers.
Why is that unfortunate?
I'd like to note that this is probably the biggest borderline-plausible hard SF idea not to have caught on (at least on a large scale) in genre fiction. And that I shamelessly strip-mined Mr Bradbury's mountain of ideas for props in "Accelerando". (In case you were wondering where SF writers get their ideas from ...)
If the idea is borrowed, it is likely to live on for longer. If it gets borrowed in a movie, the idea will go global due to the sheer amount of people who will receive the idea compared to reading a sci/fi book.
Once the idea has been spread enough, it will get borrowed enough. Before Asimov, robots were basically a chromed Frankenstein. However, now it's rare and rather dated to see a Frankenbot. Now it's typically benevolent robot/AI hurts humanity to help it, which was a frequent element in Asimov's own work.
Megastructures haven't really appeared in Hollywood movies before. There was the Deathstar and the planetary ring in Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, aside from that I seriously can't think of another without seriously stretching it. So until we see an actual-factual ringworld or dyson spheres, which are far more recognised ideas, I doubt we'll see a matrioshka brain, even though it has the biggest uses.
http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Fermilab_s... The link above is to a fermi lab program to look for Dyson spheres. The Matrioshka brain is a subset of the Dyson sphere. Something made famous, unfortunately, by Trekkers.
Why is that unfortunate?
oops guess they missed their deadline. i would like to see a graph of how these predicted dates keep receding as a counterpoint to all the exponential graphs of progress.
One would imagine that on a Dyson sphere sized computer, intercommunication (limited by speed of light) will become major bottleneck. At some point amassing components will stop winning you performance due to physical dimensions.
(This stuff got chewed over a lot on the extropians list in the early 90s, when the subject of "Jupiter Brains" -- what you get if you dismantle Jupiter and turn it into computing material -- was first raised. Googling on "neuron star" might provide some transitory amusement ...)
I'd like to note that this is probably the biggest borderline-plausible hard SF idea not to have caught on (at least on a large scale) in genre fiction. And that I shamelessly strip-mined Mr Bradbury's mountain of ideas for props in "Accelerando". (In case you were wondering where SF writers get their ideas from ...)
Long before we could ever make such a device I suspect we'll discover something along the lines of zero-point energy being real harvestable, that the universe is not in fact material and local, etc. I'm sure there are thousands more possibilities. And any one of them being true would make this device completely obsolete way before our technology advances to a point where we can create it.