A battery filled with algae is somehow managing to power this computer for months: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319584-computer-powered-by-colony-of-blue-green-algae-has-run-for-six-months/
No-one's quite sure what's going on. Possibly the algae is serving as the medium catalyzing the interaction between the anode and cathode in the battery.
Except research shows the anode isn't degrading, which suggests ...
... the *algae* is producing the electrons.
Some thoughts on this in my blog post here, item 6: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lavaforming-ai-writes-heavy-metal-and-drones-that-deliver-hamburger-helper-59b9bcfda9a8
@clive !!! I love this too much.
So great, eh?
Like I was saying in the blog post, the fascinating thing isn't just that we're increasingly discovering how much electrical current plants produce, but that we've made computers that are so low-powered than they can be conceivably powered by plants ...
Meeting in the middle
@clive Yes, exactly that. That—what, collaboration?—that you noted in the post, that feels like such a fascinating vein of possibilities.