MemeMachineGo!

Last year when I heard of disposable cellphones whose circuits were printed on paper with magnetic ink, I was so impressed by the idea that my techie excitement at the news actually outweighed my environmentalist disgust at the perpetuation of a culture of waste. (Hop-On's product thus far continues to be vaporware.)

Now, scientists are making working organic circuits.

An organic or plastic circuit, however, could theoretically be printed directly onto a package's surface in one step by a souped-up ink-jet printer at a much lower cost, perhaps less than a penny. Made of carbon and hydrogen as opposed to inorganic silicon, such circuits are soluble and can be attached to organic substrates like plastic, paper or even cloth — materials that would never survive the high temperatures required to make circuits out of silicon.

The technology is thus far slow, and only suitable for applications that don't require speed. But consider it in light of picoradio -- cheap, slow data transmission.

Distributed computing is going to be everywhere, and the results are quickly going to be weirder than we can imagine.