It might be two years old but the Popular Science overview on the state of hard science fiction is worth a quick read, if nothing other than to have a better idea what Accelerando is about (see my small review of it).
Interestingly enough, the Panulirus interruptus (California spiny lobster) mentioned on the last page, had an interesting role in the story. Apparently it was the first animal to have part of its brain (all 14 neurons in its gastric tract) simulated electronically. In fact, there has been quite a bit of research on them, as shown by the amount of peer-reviewed papers published (more here).
I wonder when the brain of a Rattus norvegicus (lab rat) will be completely simulated; will we learn a lot more about cheese and their true feelings about mazes?
See also Charles Stross’s unorthodox use of the intarweb for correcting typos in Accelerando.
You may have heard the term Darknet mentioned throughout your days on the internets.
In a nutshell, it is simply a private virtual network in which its members only share with people they trust. If you have used IRC, there are private, password protected channels that only friends can join. That is a very low-tech, yet effective proto-darknet.
In the era of lawsuits from the RIAA et al, a new generation of wares is being developed to increase a users anonymity and security. This includes the use of file encryption, proxies to continuously route and reroute traffic, and masking schemes designed to prevent the public from peering into their metaverse.
Enter AllPeers. Sean Lynch, a friend of mine, pointed me to it today and after testing it out, it seems like a usable proof-of-concept peer-to-peer darknet.
It is currently in beta mode and it shows, you can only share 300 files at a time and there are no subdirectories.
It plugs into your browser through a Firefox extension (other browsers will be supported later on). And because you only share files with people you know, there is really no way the RIAA can trace this kind of thing unless the developers install a backdoor into the software… or if the RIAA tries to trick you into sharing files with them.
It also claims to use SSL encryption and BitTorrent, however seeing as you are only sharing with a few friends, there shouldn’t be much of a need to distribute and balance the load. Also, based upon a Wikipedia entry, it seems that it is built on a bug that might be “fixed” and in doing so, would terminate its ability to act as a P2P application.
Note: this is different than a “BrightNet” like Offsystem.
