Posted on 04/09/2002 9:12:56 AM PDT by WaterDragon
Those who recall Clarke's HAL 9000, manufactured in Urbana, Illinois, cannot see a daisy without reflecting on the rational ironies of life -- one of the most flagrant of which is that the richest man on Earth is named "Gates."
Consider yourself on notice. For the fourth time in living memory, gates seem about to change our lives.
Here's the headline from the Nature Magazine item.
New channel built: Chemists copy from cells to make a tunnel for salt.
And, some text below that headline said:
Chemists have finally achieved what every human cell can do. They have designed and built from scratch a gate for electrically charged chlorine atoms to pass through.
One suspects that the announcement of the establishment of Brother Bill's New Wave Software Shoppe in Seattle received a small notice in the third page of the Seattle Times Business section.
Titanic events are like babies born in mangers often receive little attention in the media, yet go on to shake the world, do they not?
Thus, our reaction to this small item in the free area of England's most prestigious magazine. (You may think of Oregon Magazine as the Three Wise Men, here, if you wish. We didn't create this event. We just noticed the portent.)
Call us cockeyed optimists, but in our opinion, this little item represents the equivalent of the gates that have changed our lives -- the valve (vacuum tube) and the transistor. It is the next step in the journey of the biomechanical computer.....(snip)
I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal."
Hal.
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