Shepherd's Pie

Pi and Immortality

While I understand very little of Cliff Pickover's math/freaky religion world. I was digging around this page, and I really dug this idea...

"From: ollyhardy

I think Cliff's Pi idea is extremely interesting. If we put aside the goal of immortality for a second, we might consider other, more mundane uses for pi. A pi based algorithm might alllow for some unbelievably efficent data compression. Think about it. You want to copy the Encyclopedia Britannica, or a photo of your aunt, or the latest Scorcese flick? Just jump to the appropriate strings in pi. Of course, exactly how we would be able to recognize and any given string in pi as the blue print for something we know in th ereal world is easier said than done. Imagining sheerly speculative, sci fi type technology, I can envision a machine which scans objects, digitizes them and then searches for those strings in pi. It then stores the "addresses" or locations in pi where the information for any given object can be found. Once the machine knows "the address" or adresses in pi of any real world object, it can retrieve the information or build a copy as needed. Even more intersting, imagine getting creative with pi machine. Imagine a brain interfaced with a "Pi Machine" such that it could translate your thoughts into pi digits and then make your fantasies a reality? That'd be worth at least 50 bucks. "

Also from Cliff's Reality Carnival is The Zymoglyphic Museum. I pretty much really like everything there....
-JAKE

posted by JRS @ 7:30 AM