At the moment, I’d rather have sand. From my somewhat limited knowledge of the thing I’m typing on (no, not the keyboard) a computer’s brain is essentially made out of sand. Silicon is made from sand and silicon is one of the essential ingredients used to make the chips that run a computer. Unless you work for some top-level government agency using quantum computing power. But that’s later.
The irony is that we’ve been playing God for quite some time, ever since we’ve entered this Digital Age. According to the Biblical account, what’s a human brain but 3 parts dirt (or sand, since dirt just seems too dirty) and 1 part water? Computers just don't have the water.
We’ve been trying to create Artificial Intelligence for years now, ever since the power of computing became readily apparent. We’ve created the movie A.I. and I would propose that in the same way Star Trek “prophesied” certain technologies we now take for granted (voice-activated technology, PDA's, sliding doors), A.I. has done the same. (Who wouldn’t want a walking, talking, philosophical teddy bear?)
What does all this mean? What does it matter to the church that robots will soon take over the earth? (I don’t really think that’ll happen, but even if it does, we win in the end. Haven’t you seen The Matrix?) It means that this world is changing faster than it ever did before.
The change is changing faster than we can control it.
Have you ever heard of Moore’s Law? Moore was a smart fellow that estimated the time it would take chipmakers to double their processing speeds. He said it’d be about every 18 months. According to The New Shape of Computing at pcmag.com, Intel has pointed out that the 1 Ghz chip was 30 years in the making, while the 2 Ghz chip, just recently released, only took 18 months to finish. According to another article on pcmag.com, since technological change is exponential, the next 100 years will bring us 20,000 years of progress at today's rates.
We're in the era of quantum computing, it's just that it's not commerically available...yet. We're in an era where we can use the basic building blocks of the universe to create our own beings. Do you remember the last time someone wanted to know and do what God knows and does?
They got kicked out.
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