Photo credit: Andrew Adamatzky
YouTube won’t run like it does on a modified 40-year-old Commodore PET computer, but this living PC is powered by real-life mushrooms. It was developed by researchers at UWE Bristol’s Unconventional Computing Laboratory (UCL) and utilizes fungal motherboard utilizes the mycelium as component analogs and a substitute for other electronic components, such as the processor or memory.
Mushroom-powered computer most certainly cannot compete with traditional machines, although it does allow them to establish memories, similar to how the human brain forms habits. That is because mycelium can send and receive electric signals to retain memories. A spike or lack there of can be used as the basis of zeroes or ones in the binary language a computer uses. If mycelium is stimulated at two separate points, conductivity can be enhanced. Practical uses include studying how these living PCs evolve and the possibility of growing more advanced mycelium computers as well as control devices.
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I mix mycelium cultures with hemp or with wood shavings, and then place it in closed plastic boxes and allow the mycelium to colonize the substrate, so everything then looks white. Then we insert electrodes and record the electrical activity of the mycelium. So, through the stimulation, it becomes electrical activity, and then we get the response,” said Andrew Adamatzky, director of the Unconventional Computing Laboratory at UWE Bristol.
