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"For the sciences, the way to change science's perception of things is to wait until all the old farts have died off."
- Larry Niven

Gigagnostotron  
  Enormously powerful computing device.  

"...Oh, it begins innocently enough, like discovering fire by rubbing two sticks together, but eventually it leads to the construction of Omniacs, Deifacts, Hyperboreons and Ultimathuloriums! The desert on our planet is in reality no desert, but a Gigagnostotron, in other words a good 10^9 times more powerful than this primitive device of yours. Our ancestors created it for the simple reason that anything else would have been too easy for them; in their megalomania they thought to make the very sand beneath their feet intelligent..."
Technovelgy from The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age, by Stanislaw Lem.
Published by Harcourt Brace in 1965
Additional resources -

To fully understand the capacity of this device, you must first get the measure of the smaller Gnostotron.

Thanks to Yossi for suggesting this item.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age
  More Ideas and Technology by Stanislaw Lem
  Tech news articles related to The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age
  Tech news articles related to works by Stanislaw Lem

Gigagnostotron-related news articles:
  - Waterproof Sand Could Green A Desert Planet

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