The Vid is the computer:
Discovering the Virtual Information Domain, transcending Moore’s Law, and Vidic technologies beyond imagination

Abstract and biography are included below.

Contact me for questions, comments, or collaboration.

The talk was videotaped, and is archived on the web and playable on demand.  
Watch it now.  (Requires high speed Internet access, 100KBps or better.) 
Click here to see the slides. (slightly modified by the slide-making program)

     The room was not packed.  And quite a few people left during the talk.  This made it very clear to me just how innovative and out of the box and politically incorrect any discussion of virtual information is today.  Those who stayed appeared to enjoy the talk.  There were some very good questions on camera.  And some nice discussions down front after the forum closed, and out in the parking lot.

      Looking back, I wish I had focused more on details of research results, transducers, vidic architectures, programming methods, etc.  (However, some items are proprietary, and others are covered by confidentiality in my consulting.) This would have made the Vidic vision more tangible for the audience.  Well, I'll cover those things in my next talk...  Any invitations??  

     I hope I live long enough to see some of my predictions come true.  And I hope I get the chance to help bring this about. 

   Many thanks to Xerox PARC and Dave White for this opportunity to talk openly about the Vid in a historically significant setting.

The VID is the computer:   
Discovering the Virtual Information Domain, transcending Moore’s Law, and vidic technologies beyond imagination

by Chris Duffield

[former] Visiting Scholar, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Stanford University; Director of the Virtual Information Lab; webhost of IPTQ.org.

Abstract:

In biological, physical, and psychological domains there are many anomalous phenomena that could be explained by an information infrastructure in the vacuum, separate from but interacting with matter and energy. This is the Virtual Information Domain -- the VID. (Sounds like vid in video.)

The VID appears to have unlimited memory, processing power, and bandwidth. It appears to be hierarchically self-organizing (with built-in privacy and security), unlimited by time and space, and programmable by intent. It could be the substrate for thought and consciousness.

If the VID is real, the implications for science, technology, and society are staggering. In science we could find vidic mechanisms involved in molecular biology, genomics, animal behavior, evolution, and Gaia. New vidic technologies could be developed for truly ubiquitous computation and communication, true artificial intelligence, remote sensing and actuation, art, and medicine. The VID could bring intelligence to nanotechnology. Today’s information technology would soon look like a quaint prototype. Business opportunities would be bigger than anything we have known. Individual human value, integrity, and fulfillment would take on new meaning and perspective. Gaia would have her voice. Materialism would begin to appear limited and passé.

If the VID is real, it is likely that extraterrestrial intelligences even slightly more advanced than ours are active in it and have abandoned inefficient electromagnetic communication. When SETI peers into the VID, we may find a vast and fabulous ancient Internet already waiting for us -- our legacy and our destiny.

On the other hand, if the VID is not real, then we can continue to enjoy our limited materialistic life and keep ignoring a lot of unexplained anomalies.

I will briefly address information physics, a selection of observed anomalies, vidic technology and business possibilities, and a research agenda.

Biography:

Chris Duffield Ph.D. is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering [through March 2001] at Stanford University; intuitive futurist consultant; Director of the Virtual Information Lab; and webhost of IPTQ.org, a medical website. 

A graduate of Amherst College, Chris obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona (which his great-grandfather helped found) in arid lands resource sciences. His dissertation research was about solar energy in a the context of a field that he calls "planetary technoecology", inspired by Buckminster Fuller, “2001: A Space Odyssey”; and Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. 

A generalist, Chris has changed fields at least eight times, morphing through geology, ecology, optics, electronics, business, neuroscience, materials science, and biomedical engineering. Chris has invented a medical measuring device, improved running shoes, and neuroscience electrodes that went up on the Space Shuttle. He is working on books about the Virtual Information Domain (subject of this PARC forum talk) and insulin potentiation therapy (IPT -- a medical breakthrough that uses insulin to make regular drugs into super drugs, and that has been ignored for 75 years). He has created a large website about IPT at http://www.IPTQ.org . His personal website, with VID links, is http://www.iptq.com/cd/ .

Chris is looking for the right billionaire philanthropist to support IPT research and implementation, a humanitarian opportunity with estimated benefits-to-cost leverage in the millions. 

Chris is also looking for collaborators and investors to help open up the Virtual Information Domain (if it is real) to science, technology, and humanity, with estimated investment leverage in the millions or more.

Websites:

http://www.iptq.com/cd/parc.htm [Special page for PARC audience]

http://www.iptq.com/cd/ [Personal website]

http://www.iptq.org [IPT website] 

Here is the poster for the talk...   I think it's great.