When we heard about China building the world’s fastest supercomputer (called the Tianhe-1A) this morning, we couldn’t help but think of Megamind. You know, he’s the cartoon super-villain played by Will Farrell, whose mug you can’t escape when you turn on your TV? Since the movie doesn’t come out until Nov. 5, we can’t attest to knowing the entire plot, but from what we’ve gathered from the trailer, when the superhero retires, Megamind switches teams to play for the good guys. We’re kinda hoping the same thing happens with China.
We’ve already told you about how they’ve jailed a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and their environmental woes were well documented when the nation hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics. But with a supercomputer that can perform a thousand trillion operations per second, they’re bound to do some good with it, right? Sure, they might continue their nefarious ways (old habits die hard), but maybe their new invention will solve global warming or cure cancer.
Even if these things don’t happen, the Tianhe-1A is one more source of motivation for the United States to kick it into high gear. China’s already surpassed the US in high-tech exports and laps us in the amount of engineering graduates produced. Someone better start innovating for good, and we’re hoping that China, like Megamind, comes over to the light side.
Photo by anime.com.br via Flickr.