Around him, in a network of tunnels and chambers the geography of which is constantly being altered, dwells a colony of a hundred million insects. Their interactions are not as fast as an electronic system built by human hands, but each insect’s tiny brain is itself a capable engine for data storage and decision making, and the overall calculating power of the colony as a whole is something that even it cannot assess. Cloud computing: not speed but an infinitely reconfigurable breadth and complexity. There is more than enough room for the downloaded mind of Avrana Kern.
