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Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios

news.stanford.edu

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Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios

#3

Post by otakucode »

This sounds almost exactly like amorphous computing... but not. Was that bit just left out of the article? Is the intention that these chips will be used one-at-a-time and perform significant computation onboard rather than (as with amorphous computing) having computation be an emergent property of the internetworking of many such chips?

Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios

#5

Post by jfoutz »

otakucode wrote: post #3

This sounds almost exactly like amorphous computing... but not. Was that bit just left out of the article? Is the intention that these chips will be used one-at-a-time and perform significant computation onboard rather than (as with amorphous computing) having computation be an emergent property of the internetworking of many such chips?

This is going to sound a little harsh, but that's not the intention. I am genuinely curious about emergent phenomenon of computation.

I spent a lot of time messing around with toy evolutionary algorithms. I never really got any satisfaction out of those experiments. eventually I found this [1], and felt sort of foolish.

Has anything really happened with emergent properties in the last 10 years or so?

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/

Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios

#7

Post by farmerjack »

jfoutz wrote: post #5
otakucode wrote: post #3

This sounds almost exactly like amorphous computing... but not. Was that bit just left out of the article? Is the intention that these chips will be used one-at-a-time and perform significant computation onboard rather than (as with amorphous computing) having computation be an emergent property of the internetworking of many such chips?

This is going to sound a little harsh, but that's not the intention. I am genuinely curious about emergent phenomenon of computation. I spent a lot of time messing around with toy evolutionary algorithms. I never really got any satisfaction out of those experiments. eventually I found this [1], and felt sort of foolish. Has anything really happened with emergent properties in the last 10 years or so? [1] http://lessw…

I've never seen emergence "used as an explanation in its own right." I also don't understand why you would feel foolish after reading this.

Re: Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios

#9

Post by Bud »

morenoh149 wrote: post #2

I'd like to know more about how it's powered. Didn't see anything on that. Seems like it's powered by proximity to that purple square.

That's explained in the article: "a receiving antenna that also scavenges energy from incoming electromagnetic waves".
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