Would advanced intelligence even be material?

Don't forget Star Trek got here first..

But what if advanced super-intelligent life is no longer matter based? What if they exist at a higher level concept than matter. Are matter and information all there is? asks Paul Davies, physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. Five hundred years ago,he says, the very concept of a computer, a device manipulating information, or software, would have been incomprehensible. Might there still be a higher level he asks as yet outside all human experience that organizes information in the same way that information-processing organizes electrons." 

Davies envisions an alien technology that: Is not made of matter; has no fixed size or shape; has no well-defined boundaries or topology; is dynamical on all scales of space and time; or, conversely, does not appear to do anything at all that we can discern; does not consist of discrete, separate things; rather, it is a system, a subtle higher-level of things. 

This alien technology is "nature plus." Technology is in the broadest sense according to Davies, mind or intelligence or purpose blending with nature. It's technology that harnesses the laws of physics; it does not override them. To say that a radio or a laser or a monolith on the Moon is "unnatural," doesn't mean it isn't part of nature; it's nature plus. 

Just as quantum weirdness is detected only with special apparatus, so alien technology might go undetected and unsuspected --it may exist in a realm beyond current human capabilities and evolution. A third, or fourth, or fifth realm millions of years evolved beyond the age of homo sapiens.

Even physicists are saying it.

Via Daily Galaxy.