The Mushroom Motherboard: The Crazy Fungal Computers that Might Change Everything

The problem with using fungus as memory in computers is there's not mushroom to store stuff.

And when it breaks I'm gonna have to start truffleshooting

More and more convinced that fungal hallucinations are actually just peering into the universe

We've become orcs and our magic mushroom computers will soon power our new intergalactic spacecrafts.

Bio-degradable fungal computers are all fun and games until several city dumps become self-aware.

Friend: why can’t you play today? Me: my computer is trippin.

I appreciate you adding "AI depiction" to ai generated images. Never stop doing that. Keep being one of the good guys. Cheers.

This isn't surprising. Lecture from when I was in college for Computer Science was all about how we have peaked with our computing tech atm besides reorganization and tweaks. He said that the next step was switching to biological computering due to biological electric switches are faster than anything we can fabricate with non-living materials. This is a great path in exploring such progressions in computing tech.

The most important question is... can it run Doom?

When you can't play games because you forgot to feed your computer.

Oh neat, like the stuff in Scavenger's Reign. That's really neat, whoever came up with the idea must be a fun guy. 😄👍

Imagine we went back in time 100 years and told a dude that by 2024, groups of researchers have managed to communicate with fungi, and are undergoing the process of evolving specific, more suited fungi for communication so that they are capable of things beyond human processing, and even, the "ultra-futuristic" super-computing devices that are already capable of processing information at unimaginable speeds. Unc would geek.

The old game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri took place on a planet almost entirely covered in an alien fungus, and one of the ways to win the game was to use human technology to awaken the vast neural network of the fungus and create a Gaia entity, a conscious planet of alien fungus and millions of uploaded human minds.

I'd heard that they tried to incorporate one of those mushroom computers into the brain of a humanoid robot, but the damn thing just sat there looking at its hands for 3 hours while occasionally going, "whoa, dude..."

AI: want some coffee? 'SHROOMS: heh? AI: is that a yes? 'SHROOMS: bork? AI: * sigh * next day AI: ye moist enough? 'SHROOMS: can hab Pepsi? AI: * calls for gardener * 'SHROOMS: yaaaaaaaay AI: happy now? 'SHROOMS: wahts Google? AI: ...

I'm going on vacation for two weeks, can you feed and water my computer while I'm gone?

Thank you for adding the clarifying note: "AI Depiction" onto any relevant images. I hope others follow suit.

Hey Simon, thanks so much for covering this. I actually worked on mycelial computation as part of my research work in cognitive computing. One note, it's highly effective at high throughput, parallelised but extremely high latency computation with infinitely configurable IO. We see this as an excellent opportunity for 2 specific Computational/interface problems. 1: AI inference 2: Brain computer interfaces. With the second being particularly important for us. Imagine being able to take a small series of injections, and a brain computer interface will literally build itself inside your head, no invasive surgery, no risk of an EMP or electrocution frying your brain, and the ability to remove it with a small course of antifungal medications. This may sound frightening to some, but to us the idea of non "hard", fully reversible BCI tech that could act as a neural symbiote is extremely exciting. The best of fungal advantages for neural health, the ability to have a functional, near cellular level resolution BCI that is also fully reversible without invasive surgery or potentially any lasting damage is incredibly exciting. Once again thank you so much for covering this topic, it means the world to me and my team. Kruger

fungi do not pre-date “any other living organism”. They just pre-date plants and animals.

We must be VERY CAREFUL with fungal/human connections. Medically, internal fungal infections are extremely difficult to deal with and are often fatal. We just don't know enough how to control them.