That’s from the Orange Catholic Bible from Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 SciFi novel Dune. (Which reminds me – it’s time to read it again.)
Back in 2008 I reported on the successful creation of the fourth fundamental electronic component. To complement the inductor, resistor and capacitor, researchers at Hewlett-Packard had finally created the Memristor. The characteristic of the memristor is that its resistance changes based on the direction current flows through it. In one direction the resistance goes up, in the other direction, down. But the key characteristic is that after the current flow stops, the resistance of the device stops changing and remains fixed. It is, in effect, a non-volatile memory device.
At the time the story was that several neuroscience and engineering labs were looking at the memristor as the key component for systems that emulate neural networks.
And they still are. Now the research is being funded by DARPA. If you’re at all interested in artificial intelligence, it’s a fascinating article.
And the Singularity grows nearer.