Fungi are alien things, neither plants nor animals, although they have a close affinity to both. They belong to their own realm and are always the subject of more subtle studies, like the one in Unconventional Silver Compute, where they try to connect them to computers if they can afford it.
“I mix mycelium cultures with hemp or wood chips, put them in sealed plastic boxes, and bring the mycelium to the substrate, and as a result everything appears white,” explains Andreas Adamatzky, director of the Unconventional Computing Laboratory at the University of Bristol. We then placed the electrodes and recorded the electrical activity of the mycelium. At that point, through stimulation, electrical activity takes place and we get a response.”
Irina Petrova Adamatzky
computerized mushrooms
The branch structure of the root fungus acts as a conductor, like the electronic components of a computer. They already know that fungi interact with the environment and the organisms around them through a kind of “Internet” communication.
By identifying the language that fungi use to send signals through this biological network, scientists will not only gain insight into the state of underground ecosystems, but also join forces to improve our information systems.
“In fact, we found that mushrooms produce spikes similar to action potentials. The same spikes that neurons produce,” Adamatzky explained. “We are the first laboratory to report a fungal nail measured with a microelectrode and the first to develop and calculate fungal electronics.”
“Now it’s just a matter of doing feasibility studies. We’ll just show that it’s possible to implement computing and that we can do it in basic logic circuits and in electronic elements with mycelium,” says Adamatzky. In the future we could control more mycelium of computers and devices.”
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