I wrote:
> In the short story "The Last Question" Asimov had a gigantic computer, > Multivac, solving the energy crisis in 2061, by tapping solar energy of the > sun with "a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half > the distance of the Moon." . . . > > Things often turn out to be easier than we predict. > I mean that people have already engineered designs for space-based power without the help of a gigantic Multivac. I suppose they used ordinary desktop PCs. See, for example: http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/ These designs may not be practical but they are probably not far from being practical. No one would argue they are physically impossible. It is hard to judge whether they would be cost effective. The point is, they did not require an esoteric breakthrough in physics that only a super-intelligent computer can make. We do have something similar to the Multivac: the Google complex of computers, which are PCs held together with Velcro. As of 2006 there were roughly 450,000 of them. That represents an unimaginable amount of computing power. I think it is by far the largest supercomputer on earth. You wonder what they plan to do with it besides conduct searches, or what it plans to do to us. - Jed
