h+ Magazine

Who stop at femtotech? Physics also allows attotechnology and beyond to zeptotechnology. These “X-Tech” possibilities provide a potential solution to the Fermi Paradox (“where are all the nonhuman civilizations?”). We may need a paradigm shift from SETI to SIPI — the Search for Infra Particle Intelligence!

It might be possible to build a femtocomputer along lines vaguely similar to current DNA computers…

My goal in this essay is an ambitious one: to show how the properties of quarks and gluons can be used (in principle) to perform computation at the femtometer (i.e. 10^-15 meter) scale. This is admittedly highly speculative and theoretical material — but it’s all within the domain of science, and given the reality of exponential advance, may well become practical technology sometime in this century.

Ben Goertzel converses with Hugo de Garis on his transhumanist argument for the reality of a Creator.