NetDynam 2.0

This extends a comment in response to Frank on the post The Mind Is Not A Brain.

Breakthrough Promises Faster Computer Chips

Researchers have shown that a single sheet of graphene, which measure just a few tenths of a nanometer, or even a few sheets, can exhibit special properties. One such property is very high mobility, in which electrons can pass through it very quickly – a good characteristic for fast electronics. Another is magnetism, which would enable magnetic fields to be used to control the spin of graphene electrons, which would enable spin-based electronics, also called spintronics. Graphene’s properties also change dramatically when it touches other materials making it a good candidate material for chemical sensors.

Also: Researchers Find Better Way to Manufacture Fast Computer Chips (from Nanotechnology Now)

Intelligent Agents @WikiRank. (excerpt)

In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is an autonomous entity which observes and acts upon an environment (i.e. it is an agent) and directs its activity towards achieving goals (i.e. it is rational). Intelligent agents may also learn or use knowledge to achieve their goals. They may be very simple or very complex: a reflex machine such as a thermostat is an intelligent agent, as is a human being, as is a community of human beings working together towards a goal.

Intelligent agents are often described schematically as an abstract functional system similar to a computer program. For this reason, intelligent agents are sometimes called abstract intelligent agents (AIA) to distinguish them from their real world implementations as computer systems, biological systems, or organizations. Some definitions of intelligent agents emphasize their Wiktionary:Autonomy(autonomy), and so prefer the term autonomous intelligent agents. Still others (notably ) considered goal-directed behavior as the essence of intelligent and so prefer a term borrowed from economics, “rational agent”

(diagram and excerpt from Intelligent Agents, Chapter 2, (PDF) Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, c 1995

(click to enlarge)

An agent’s behavior can be based on both its own experience and the built-in knowledge used in constructing the agent for the particular environment in which it operates. A system is autonomous4 to the extent that its behavior is determined by its own experience. It would be too stringent, though, to require complete autonomy from the word go: when the agent has had little or no experience, it would have to act randomly unless the designer gave some assistance. So, just as evolution provides animals with enough built-in reflexes so that they can survive long enough to learn for themselves, it would be reasonable to provide an artificial intelligent agent with some initial knowledge as well as an ability to learn.

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Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
Published: June 5, 2009 New York Times

Gist of article is: supply of blogs outstrips demand. Most bloggers give up their blogging project. Quite possible an active blog will have no readership.

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views.” He added, “There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”