In the Novemeber issue of ACM's Ubiquity, Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University asks if "humans will eventually create silicon machines with minds that will slowly spread all over the world, and the entire universe will eventually become a conscious machine?" Along the way he ponders whether consciousness is outside the pale of science altogether and whether the brain is an "ordinary" machine or a very special type of machine. He covers a lot of ground and a lot of theories of intelligence and consciousness. He notes in the end that "if machines with consciousness are created, they would be living machines, that is, variations on life forms as we know them."