KFL@MIT-MC.ARPA (10/16/85)
From: Keith F. Lynch <KFL@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Date: 11 Oct 85 11:17:00 PST
From: nep.pgelhausen@ames-vmsb.ARPA
Point to ponder: To record the memory of a computer, the machine
must IN IT'S MEMORY have the position of each electron in itself.
I believe that there are not enough electrons in a finite space
to be able to store (as memory) the positions of each electron
making up the memory.
This may be necessary to duplicate a person (assuming it is possible
to at all) but to duplicate a computer all you need to do is construct
identical or equivalent logic elements (which need not be atom for atom
identical) and make sure each memory location contains the same bit as
the original had there.
This is best developed in Arthur C. Clarke's _The_City_and_the_Stars_,
in which a city and its controlling computer and a starship are preserved
unchanged for over a billion (thousand million) years by the computer
constantly checking everything, including its own memory, against its
redundant memory. Something can decay only if several copies of a given
bit in the computer's memory simultaneously change, which is very
unlikely even over eons.
...Keith