Turning the Internet into One Massive Machine

Doug Bailey (Doug.Bailey@ey.com)
Tue, 12 Jan 1999 16:36:28 -0500

A Colorado partnership consisting of three people claims to have developed a technology to turn the Internet into one massive supercomputer. I'm a bit skeptical of this claim but the PR Newswire deemed it fit enough to publish. It will be interesting to see the technical specs of this concept. If tenable, it will be more interesting to see what, if any, emergent properties develop due to the implementation of such technology.

Doug Bailey
doug.bailey@ey.com
nanotech@cwix.com

Excerpts from the press release at the URL below:

"FORT COLLINS, Colo. Jan. 11. An invention that will exponentially
increase the speed and capacity of Internet data flow and create the world's first global "virtual mainframe" was announced today by Copernicus Technologies."

"Copernicus2 TM uses high-resolution GPS timing signals across the
Internet to create a massive parallel supercomputing system."

"Copernicus2 TM will structure the Internet or any other network to
function as a single supercomputer. This massive parallel processor will be capable of executing complex programs at extremely high speed.
Virtual modeling of the physical world in real time will be possible with greater accuracy and detail than with existing supercomputers. It also could be configured as a neural network, with each user representing a single node.
'We don't know yet how to write programs for such large computers,' Johnson said. "But we do know they hold the key to the future of computing, possible even the key to artificial intelligence."

http://www.copernicus2.com/standard.txt