They moved into your devicethe physical limit of computing

Computing has a physical energy floor. Landauer's principle and the history of devices behind the Cosmos Era ending “They moved into your device”.

How much thinking can fit inside a phone? Landauer's principle sets a physical floor on the energy cost of computing: at room temperature, erasing 1 bit of information dissipates at least about 3×10⁻²¹ joules of heat. In theory, the energy in one phone battery could power an unimaginable amount of thought, while real chips are still very far from this limit. The game's ending “They moved into your device” builds on this idea: the nearest computer may not be among the stars.

This page first explains how to unlock the ending, then covers what Landauer's principle means, then the history of computing and electronic devices, and finally two related novels. A civilization squeezed into one device is fiction. The CPU core count and screen size the game reads are used only in your browser and are not uploaded.

How to unlock it

  • Hint: The nearest computer may not be among the stars.
  • Condition: Unlock “Moving into the device”, then witness the end of the universe.
  • Reward: A small civilization appears in a corner of the page and leaves a message now and then.

The ending belongs to the Mind category. The description of the “Moving into the device” node is the same sentence as the hint: the nearest computer may not be among the stars.

Real science: the physical floor of computing

Landauer's principle says that computing is not free: erasing information costs at least this much heat. At room temperature, erasing 1 bit dissipates at least about 3×10⁻²¹ joules. That is a very small number, so in theory the energy in one phone battery could power an unimaginable amount of thought. In reality, chips are still very far from this limit.

How a device came to be

  • Electromagnetic field theory: Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism and calculated that the speed of electromagnetic waves equals the speed of light: light is an electromagnetic wave (Maxwell, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1865).
  • Computability: Alan Turing imagined an abstract machine that defined what "computation" is, laying the theoretical foundation of modern computers (Turing, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 1936).
  • Information theory: Claude Shannon turned "information" into a measurable quantity, and the bit was born (Shannon, Bell System Technical Journal, 1948).
  • The transistor: A single piece of semiconductor can amplify a signal. It replaced the vacuum tube and shrank the computer from the size of a room to something that fits in a pocket (Bardeen and Brattain, Physical Review, 1948).
  • The World Wide Web: An internal proposal that the boss annotated "Vague but exciting" later became the World Wide Web (Berners-Lee, CERN, 1989).

These are related real studies about how devices and computing developed. They are not evidence that a civilization lives inside a device.

The end of the universe

The fate of the universe trillions of years from now and beyond: stars burn out, protons may decay, and black holes eventually evaporate (Adams and Laughlin, Reviews of Modern Physics, 1997). Unlocking requires witnessing the end of the universe, which is why it relates to this ending.

  • Permutation City (Greg Egan, 1994): Whether a mind can be uploaded depends on whether consciousness is determined by information processing alone, which is still an open question. In the novel, a man copies his consciousness into a computer, then finds that even when the order of computation is scrambled, paused and rearranged, the copy feels nothing unusual.
  • Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984): The book popularized the word "cyberspace". Today brain-computer interfaces already let paralyzed people type with their thoughts. In the novel, a hacker who has been stripped of his abilities is hired for one last job, tracking an artificial intelligence in virtual network space that wants to break free of its limits.

Game lore, not real

A civilization squeezed into one device is fiction. The reward, "a small civilization appears in a corner of the page and leaves a message now and then", is game lore.

Want to read the originals? Search these titles

  • Maxwell (1865): "A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field"
  • Turing (1936): "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem"
  • Shannon (1948): "A mathematical theory of communication"
  • Bardeen and Brattain (1948): "The transistor, a semi-conductor triode"
  • Adams and Laughlin (1997): "A dying universe: the long-term fate and evolution of astrophysical objects"
  • Berners-Lee (1989): "Information management: A proposal"

Real basis

  • Landauer's principle gives the physical lower bound on the energy cost of computation.

  • Moving into the device: Landauer's principle: at room temperature, erasing 1 bit of information dissipates at least about 3×10⁻²¹ J of heat. In theory, the energy in one phone battery could power an unimaginable amount of thinking; real chips are still very far from this limit.

  • Permutation City (Greg Egan, 1994), the science: whether a mind can be uploaded depends on whether consciousness is determined by information processing alone, which is still an open question.

  • Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984), the science: the book popularized the word “cyberspace”; today’s brain–computer interfaces already let paralyzed people type with their thoughts.

Related research

These studies relate to this topic but are not direct proof of this page.

  • Electromagnetic field theory: Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism and calculated that the speed of electromagnetic waves equals the speed of light: light is an electromagnetic wave.

    Source: Maxwell, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 1865, "A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field"

  • Computability: Turing imagined an abstract machine that defined what “computation” is, laying the theoretical basis of modern computers.

    Source: Turing, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 1936, "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem"

  • Information theory: Shannon turned “information” into a measurable quantity, and the bit was born.

    Source: Shannon, Bell System Technical Journal 1948, "A mathematical theory of communication"

  • The transistor: One piece of semiconductor can amplify a signal. It replaced vacuum tubes and shrank computers from room-sized to pocket-sized.

    Source: Bardeen & Brattain, Physical Review 1948, "The transistor, a semi-conductor triode"

  • The World Wide Web: An internal proposal, which the boss annotated “vague but exciting.” It later became the World Wide Web.

    Source: Berners-Lee, CERN 1989, "Information management: A proposal"

  • The last chapter of the universe: Worked out the fate of the universe over trillions of years and beyond: stars go out, protons perhaps decay, and black holes finally evaporate.

    Source: Adams & Laughlin, Reviews of Modern Physics 1997, "A dying universe: the long-term fate and evolution of astrophysical objects"

Game lore (fictional)

  • A civilization compressed into a single device is fiction.
  • The number of cores read and the screen size are used only in your browser and are not uploaded.
  • Node “Moving into the device”: The computer closest to you is right at your hand.
  • Summary of the novel Permutation City: A man copies his mind into a computer and then discovers that even if the order of computation is scrambled, paused or rearranged, the copy feels nothing unusual.
  • Summary of the novel Neuromancer: A hacker whose abilities have been destroyed is hired for one last job, tracking an AI that wants to break its limits through virtual cyberspace.
See it in the game