Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun science fiction A hypothetical material engineered to maximize its use as a computing substrate.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From computer and -ium.

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Examples

  • Every so often, some deranged non-transhumanist tries to get a significant chunk of the transhumanist community (anything from a mailing list to the whole WTA) to promise not to start converting every bit of matter we can into "computronium" (rough element-like name for matter converted to be the most efficient computing substrate possible) the moment that this is possible.

    March 10th, 2003 2003

  • Some raw materials will be diverted into energy production, and the rest will be transformed into computronium, a kind of programmable matter that's perfect for making thinking machines.

    The Shape of Things to Come 2008

  • The economist Robin Hanson predicts that some of our computronium-based progeny may colonize the cosmos in a peaceful, cooperative manner, like nice liberal Democrats.

    The Shape of Things to Come 2008

  • It's not often I come across completely new and unsuspected words/concepts, so it must be a good omen that I happened upon this today: computronium.

    Archive 2007-01-01 glyn moody 2007

  • Why travel in space when we can turn the earth into computronium and open up new worlds billions of times more interesting than anything blind chance i.e., nature has to offer?

    The Speculist: Zefram Cochran's To-Do List 2006

  • Why travel in space when we can turn the earth into computronium and open up new worlds billions of times more interesting than anything blind chance i.e., nature has to offer?

    The Speculist: Zefram Cochran's To-Do List 2006

  • All of us, you included, before the Vile Offspring decide to reprocess us into computronium.

    Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

  • The writing is, as they say, on the wall: we frail mortals might wish to move to a neighborhood where the youth is less raucous and maybe less inclined to accidentally converts our planets into computronium.

    Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

  • The intelligence bloom that gnaws at Jupiter's moons with claws of molecular machinery won't stop until it runs out of dumb matter to convert into computronium.

    Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

  • Or maybe steal a Matrioshka brain that's succumbed to senile dementia and turn it back into planetary biomes with cores of diamond-phase computronium to fulfill some kind of demented pastoralist nostalgia trip.

    Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

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