You look like a fungi. Got mushroom in your life to build stuff with mycelium computers?

The Unconventional Computing Laboratory in Bristol is looking for a research associate to help it create buildings with embedded fungus-created computers. The University of the West of England lab is offering £30,000 to £33,000 a year to join its research project. Professor Andrew Adamatzky has already demonstrated that a …

[TRT]

So long as the applications aren't...

provided by Mycosoft.

[Bibbit]

Iain M Banks was a genius

If I remember correctly in his 2010 Culture novel “Surface Detail” the galaxy’s virtual “hells” were housed and processed on a fungal substrate beneath the grounds of a country estate. I miss him.

[alain williams]

That would really be ...

magic mushrooms.

They might find it easier to get some Psilocybe semilanceata and just believe that it all works ...

[Mark 85]

Re: That would really be ...

'Magic mushrooms" indeed. There's a side benefit to this. When you're done with the computer, you can sauté it in some butter and maybe garlic. Hopefully, it'll taste good also.

[Neil Barnes]

a strong interest in electrophysiology of fungi

I have to admit that of all the passing interests with which I have filled my life over the years, that is one that has so far failed to register.

[Tom 7]

So you get the mycelium to short itself out?

Is this not a bit like dropping solder all over your circuit boards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So you get the mycelium to short itself out?

You could fashion an RFID circuit using it; maybe make an Oyster card. With a button on it.

[spold]

Updates

So a wrecking crane comes around announcing new updates are available?

No windows in my building please.

[TRT]

Re: No windows in my building please.

That's fine. They prefer the dark.

Actually... who DO you call when the walls start sprouting fruiting bodies? Linda McCartney?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No windows in my building please.

Quorn-tum computing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No windows in my building please.

So quorny.

[TRT]

Star Trek?

Space – the final front jelly ear...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Star Trek?

In this case, the walls have jelly ears.

[Muscleguy]

Hmmm

If you think Neurophysiology is niche I have news for you. I did my PhD in the neurophys section of a Physiology dept and pretty much any physiology dept the world over will have one. You find physiology depts in universities with medical schools or veterinary colleges to give you an idea of how common they are.

I have never stuck a recording electrode in a cell but I’ve watched it being done and I’ve pulled injection pipettes for injecting DNA into fertilised mouse eggs to create transgenics and a recording electrode is simply one of those filled with ionic buffer instead of DNA and with a wire in the solution leading to recording equipment. You can buy them pre-made these days.

[spold]

Re: Hmmm

My cat is fascinated

[TRT]

The Laboratory of Unconventional Computing?

actually... this all sounds rather familiar...

[Nick Kew]

Re: The Laboratory of Unconventional Computing?

Indeed, I was just trying to imagine what Sir Pterry might have made of this story. Oook!

[Ima Ballsy]

Talk about ....

environmentally friendly !! If you screw up your die, you can just chop it up and server it on your salad !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Talk about ....

Chop it into bits? Or just nybbles?

[BebopWeBop]

Re: Talk about ....

Minced or chunky?

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Talk about ....

Byte sized chunks.

[Grooke]

I hope the research team will be diverse and include some fun gals.

[BebopWeBop]

Well, they are hoping that the funghis will attract fungelles.

[TRT]

That's the yeast of your worries.

[Blockchain commentard]

And when a swarm of hungry locusts pass overhead .... explain that to your home insurer!!!!

[Bloodbeastterror]

"a fungi"

The writer is an illiterates.

[TRT]

Re: "a fungi"

It's just a bit of a shiittake on what could have been a really interesting story.

[DCFusor]

So there's a supercomputer

In my crawl space. I thought it was just eating my floor from beneath. Anyone got a compiler?

[adam 40]

I suppose you'd program it in

....

wait for it...

..

.

.

.

.

.

.

Mouldula-2 !

[Yes Me]

Re: I suppose you'd program it in

Where is the GROOOAAAN icon?

[TRT]

Re: I suppose you'd program it in

Not Agora Agaric?

[Anonymous Coward]

This could end badly

What if the fungus becomes self aware, figures out how to become airborne and infects human brains like Cordyceps does with ants but using the information on the Internet to figure out how to rewrite the DNA of its prospective host(s).

Zombies anyone?

AC because this is hopefully just really bad science fiction.

[Mike 137]

"You look like a fungi"

Unfortunately the joke doesn't work, as "fungi" is a plural and "a" is the singular article so it just looks like ignorance of grammar.

Too many journos on too many publications try too hard to be funny and fail. Real humour is effortless but bogus humour is excruciating.

[TRT]

Re: "You look like a fungi"

'spore humour indeed. But despite that, you're coming across as not a fun guy.

[Loatesy]

. . . and they say the right sort of Shrooms expand the conciousness.

Whats next? MS spell checker with messages like "Woah Man, bad karma, chill out and read a dictionary, yeah....."

BTW - Didn't Star Trek: Voyager feature bio-neural gel packs?

[Michael Wojcik]

Dried mycelium? That does not compute. That does not compute! Explodes.

[TRT]

Leaving a mushroom cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing a 0 in the salary

Considering what they want in a candidate, the salary must be a mistype.

[TRT]

Re: Missing a 0 in the salary

Sadly, that's science. I was considering it as I fill pretty much all of the requirements, but not at that salary!

[Anonymous Coward]

job description

So they're looking for Mark Watney, minus the astronaut training?

[Conundrum1885]

Or in this case

Engage the displacement-activated spore hub drive.

Anyone seen Lt. Stamets? Last I heard he had an entire supply cabinet full of Mycota fall on him and now he's stuck in the Delta Quadrant near Borg space.

Fortunately the Borg took pity on him and dropped him off somewhere just past the Devore Imperium. So instead of cubes its inspection fleets. Mwahahahaha...

Not sure if the Devore believed the whole "came from the other side of the galaxy using the mycelial plane" story.

[ovation1357]

I guess this wouldn't be compatible with Ethernet so it would have to be networked using Fairy Ring instead with spore-adic transmission.

[TRT]

If they used fly agaric, they probably have reefernet or toking ring already.