gRobots is ‘a massively distributed supercomputing platform for the ongoing modelling and simulation of evolvable nanotechnology.’ Does it get more tech than this? ‘We firmly believe that the converging fields of nanotechnology, evolutionary computing, and pervasive networking together represent both the greatest opportunity and threat for our universe,’ say the people behind the gRobots project. They reckon that the best way forward for nanotech is to provide a simulated VR environment for diddy likkle self-replicating machines to be tested, evaluated and farmed. Sounds sensible enough to us. We wouldn’t want swarms of these things escaping into the real world without having modelled the consequences beforehand, would we? Oh, no. ‘This is no trivial task,’ as they are quick point out. ‘If we are to avoid the so called ‘gray goo’ problem [which is what? Someone please tell us!], and at the same time harness the power of natural selection, we must find ways of containing these self-replicators.‘To this end, the gRobots project is deploying a massively parallel supercomputer based on the generic ‘workers around a shared jobs bag’ idea. So if you’re interested in getting on board as a developer, helper, writer, or ‘gardener’ (helping to bring up healthy crops of nanotech), take a trip down to gRobots central. They’re just getting started down there and it looks like a whole heap of fun. If you’re into diddy technology, that is. And let’s face it - who isn’t these days?gRobots. Return of the Diddymen:www.grobots.org