"Water is the most sophisticated technology that anyone has ever seen. We won't even get close. We're not going to get close for a hundred million years yet. So, why not understand ourselves as water computing systems?"⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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“It's true! Computer memory is a crystalline structure that consists typically of quartz crystal silicone molecules arrayed in 3 dimensions and each atom is capable of two different configurations, which are interpreted as a “1" or a “0", or “on" and “off". And because there are so many of these atoms, the computer can store a lot of information. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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Now consider this fourth phase, this crystalline form of water. The oxygen and hydrogen are organised in 3 dimensional honeycomb sheets. The oxygens are particularly stable in this matrix; they are arrayed at fixed points (not bouncing around randomly). ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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Do they have two different states, like silicone does? No, they don’t. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

They have 6!! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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These are valence or oxidation states. -2 is most common for oxygen, but there’s also -1, 0, +1 and +2. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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So returning to the computer analogy, if you had 6 states of silicon rather than 2, it would be an increase of information density that is something close to a billion times the information density compared to a computer. In other words, water molecules are about a billion times more intelligent than even the world’s most advanced computer. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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Absolutely every piece of computer data in the world, the whole internet, every cat picture in existence is just made of 1s and 0s arranged in a particular way. And all of the water in the world is hydrogen and oxygen, and it carries the entire memory of the entire history of our planet. In each and every molecule. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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This is why Dr. Rustam Roy said crystalline water is the word's single most malleable computer.” -isabel friend