From: John Holmes (t-johnh@microsoft.com)
Date: Wed Aug 11 1999 - 15:42:15 MDT
I was under the impression there was a team working on such a networked
parallel computing infrastructure. However, I thought they were centered at
distributed.net and from what I just saw of that site, not too much has been
accomplished in the past year. If there is not such a project going on, then
it certainly seems there should be. Any volunteers to get one going?
-----Original Message-----
From: Jones, Spike [mailto:spike.jones@lmco.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 1999 2:08 PM
To: 'extropians@extropy.com'
Subject: singularity and exi-GIMPS team
Someone please forward this to Eliezer. thanks!
Question Eliezer and other singulatarians: would it enhance
progress toward the singularity if a large number of personal
computers were to be set up to run 24-7-52 and were inter-
connected? It would seem so, and this gives me an idea.
We have been talking about an extropians GIMPS team, and
we already have a seti@home team. But, we dont *have* to
run either. We can combine the teams into a parallel computing
infrastructure, that would then be usable as a resource for other
projects, perhaps ones that are more pertinent to extropians,
such as Shane Brubaker's sim of a leech brain, or some wild
scheme by Eliezer, for instance.
The important thing is to *start* somewhere, which is to pick
a project, such as seti or GIMPS, and get extropians comfortable
with leaving their computers on, and with the notion that something
is running behind the screensaver scenes. GIMPS is a good
technology demonstration platform for this, since I know from
experience that it does not crash your computer and it gets
outta your way when you are doing something else.
A few months ago, I would have been loathe to do *anything*
which might hasten the singularity, however, as I think it over
the idea is growing on me. Of course, I still have some dread
that the singularity might want to kill us all. That would be
"bad".
But maybe not.
Eliezer, please take me outta your kill file temporarily for the
sake of this discussion, which is up your alley, but delete
anything from me which is not labelled singularity. thanks! spike
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