THE photographer Simon Norfolk has travelled the world photographing supercomputers. His work is not an act of devotion or even admiration. 鈥淭hese computers are not amiable assistants, they are distant and sinister,鈥� he says in his commentary to the series of pictures he calls The Supercomputers: 鈥淚鈥檓 sorry Dave, I鈥檓 afraid I can鈥檛 do that鈥�.
Norfolk is interested in what it means to be human. He believes that supercomputers have already entered a realm beyond human ken. 鈥淭he problem is not that these computers might one day resemble humans; it is that they already resemble gods,鈥� he says. Part of Norfolk鈥檚 pessimism stems from his revulsion at the work of some of these machines. The world鈥檚 most powerful supercomputer, BlueGene/L, carries out 280 trillion calculations every second at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and is used to simulate nuclear explosions. Norfolk contends that BlueGene/L actually designs America鈥檚 nuclear weapons, which is a bit like saying that the pencil designed the highways. The truth is that humans bend supercomputers to their will, not the other way around.
Most supercomputers are hugely expensive because they are custom designed and built, but the machine here is different. Called MareNostrum, meaning 鈥渙ur sea鈥�, it is housed in a 1920s chapel at the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, and built from commercially available parts. While it is only the eighth fastest on the planet, it is the most cost-effective in its class by far, proving that a supercomputer needn鈥檛 cost the Earth to be able to simulate it.
Advertisement
Could computers one day become so powerful they live up to Norfolk鈥檚 fears? If it happens, we may well hanker after the benign capabilities of today鈥檚 devices. Go to to see his supercomputer series.