Of all of my ideas...what are the odds this would show-up just a day after we talked about the possibility of genetically engineered power sources? Now it doesn't necessarily need a central nervous system. In my model, one would power the organism with raw waste, essentially feeding the thing garbage in exchange for its heat and bio-electricity. This research allows a different approach altogether. The organism could soak up raw nutrients (perhaps still derived from waste materials), but now all it has to do is "live enough" to produce glucose which is then used to generate power. All we need to do is figure out what type of "waste" we want this organic power plant to consume. No doubt, different "fuels" would produce energies of varying quantities and qualities. There would also be by-products.

Scientists foresee using this form of energy production to power devices imbedded in us. This is, of course, not nearly as creepy as it sounds to some. In fact, there are those who would like nothing more than to have all manner of gadgets and devices implanted in their bodies for various reasons. But the possibilities are greater than that.

Why create minuscule bits of machinery that can run off a large biological organism like ourselves when we can create large biological organisms that can power our machinery? Sure you'd probably need to have a Cthulhu looking mass of living "mouths" and "assholes" as big as a house to consume the raw waste of a small town, but if it pumped out enough energy to power all the town' s traffic lights, why not? Keep it at the dump. Use its waste as fertilizer.

These glucose-to-electricity-things will become more efficient with time. With a bit of waste processing, I bet scientists could eventually find a way to squeeze our shit and garbage into high-energy "power bars" for our fleshy minions. All the better to power the bio-mechanical bodies we could give them once the relative mass of their organic parts decreased enough in size to be economical. The first automatons would likely be dumb, giant-sized, lightweight, and efficient eating machines. Hollow-boned dinosaurs would be a good model for early prototypes.

As the technology advances, faster, stronger, smaller machines could be powered by less and less glucose-producing organic material. Conversely, advances in nanomachinery could also be utilized to direct and control walking, eating power plants that not only live and die, but also do as they are programmed.

This issue goes well beyond the debate of the moral propriety of mere cloning. But that's a different discussion.

It might also be interesting to note the fact that just previous to discussing genetically engineered energy sources, we were talking about Artificial Intelligence and the recent sea change in the realm of supercomputing. Advocates of supercomputers have won-out in a series of contract and grant proposals - especially with DARPA and the NSA - against their rivals: Proponents of cluster/grid processing.

A large enough database, particularly something like the Semantic Web project, combined with the correct approach to processing, could be the precursor to legitimate, advanced AI. An AI is after all just a large database, a powerful processor (or cluster), and a sophisticated querying client. The leap in this evolution will come when an AI achieves the capacity for original thought; when it is capable of identifying a desire or need of its own, and able to act on it. We wondered at what could motivate such a quickening.

The most logical impetus - I now believe - would be hunger. The need for self-preservation through the consumption of food, fuel, or energy might be enough to "inspire" the awakening of an AI. While this is difficult to imagine given the current form and function of AI, it becomes a more reasonable possibility when one considers the evolutionary potential of independent, self-powered, quasi-organic automatons endowed - by their creators - with memory.

Depending on which ways these technologies go, we could end up with either "Attack of the Man-Eating Nanobots!," "The Matrix," or maybe just "2001." Then again, maybe the near future will be beyond our present comprehension, and not entirely of our own making.

Labels: environmentalism, oil, technology