Rebooting The World?

Kristopher Johnson asks: "As things are now, it is pretty easy to develop software for new hardware platforms. Just write a cross-compiler on an existing platform, and then copy the binary to the new system. New hardware is designed and manufactured using software running on existing hardware. So what if we had to start over from scratch? Say some cataclysm occurs that fries all microprocessors and scrambles the contents of all existing ROMs, disks, CD-ROMs, and any other machine-readable media in all computers. And the same fate falls on all high-tech manufacturing equipment. What would be the fastest way to 're-computerize' the world? What would we do differently if we didn't have fifty years worth of legacy systems to continue maintaining?" It's an interesting thought, and one that I tend to not spend much time worrying about. For those of you who have, however, how do you think humanity would recover from a catastrophic loss of all electronic technology? My personal experience is that if something like this were to occur, we would not recover very quickly, but I'm not as optimistic as I was a few years ago. Maybe some of you can paint a better picture.

Comments

Related

[Shotgun]

Suppose YOU had a time machine and got stuck in some medieval time. Would you survive more than a day? What of your advanced technical knowledge would be of any use to you without the advance tools that you honestly couldn't replicate? Would you live like a king or a beggar?

For instance, if I was thrown in the past, I feel that I could live comfortably if I could improve the life and health of a king and his court. Perhaps by building a plumbing or central heating system for his castle. But this always begs the question of where would I get pipes, pumps and ventilation ducts. I usually end up feeling dumber that I like, so I quit thinking about it.

As to the question at hand. The truth is that much of the problems with legacy systems would be reproduced if we had to start from ground zero. How would we produce a transistor without the knowledge and equipment to produce a diode? Once we have the equipment set up to produce transistors and diodes, how quickly do we abandon a machine full of discreet transistor and diodes which is used to make integrated circuits? The problem with legacy systems is not a technological one. It is an economic one, much related to the problem of do you remodel a building or tear down the old and build it new.

Re:Related

[Tackhead]

>Suppose YOU had a time machine and got stuck in some medieval time. Would you survive more than a day?

Probably not. I wouldn't smell like the rest of the peasants, my haircut, clothing, and speech patterns would be "all wrong", and I'd be burned as a witch/warlock within a few hours.

> I feel that I could live comfortably if I could improve the life and health of a king and his court. Perhaps by building a plumbing or central heating system for his castle.

And if you didn't get burned as a witch, this would clinch it :)

But speaking hypothetically - if you could avoid the stake - yes, this would be where to start.

> How would we produce a transistor without the knowledge and equipment to produce a diode?

Read "A Canticle for Leibowitz", probably the best "manual for rebooting civilization" ever written.

You've glommed onto part of the problem, but not all of it. The real key is "why would you want to make a diode?" To want to make a diode, you need to understand semiconductors. To do that, you need to understand "conductor" and "nonconductor". To do that you need to understand electricity.

I'd start by using a steam engine (the "big sphere with two jets sticking out of it" from Greek times) to turn a wheel. I'd ask the blacksmith to make me something that approximated metal wire, wrap some around some wooden dowels, grab some lodestone for magnets, etc...

If (again, building a generator would likely get you burned as a witch - look, the witch makes lightning from a spinning wheel! Unholy!) I didn't burn at the stake for it, I'd have electricity.

Electricity gives you better smelting capabilities, electroplating, and opens up lots of cool physics - radio, etc. as well as motors to drive pumps. Radio would give my King superior communications, and superior communications would allow him to defend the Kingdom against opponents.

The rest would take care of itself - pump-vaccum-tube-semiconductor. Semiconductor-diode-transistor. Throw in the notion of the Turing machine and programmability (no software, just the idea that state machines can be made to do things), and you've got computing again.

To rephrase the question -- would you rather that a hyperadvanced alien species give you a device that could communicate faster than light? Or would you rather they give you the physics breakthroughs that explains how to build such a device.

If they give you the device, you have a nifty toy.

If they give you the physics textbook, you've just advanced your civilization by $BIGNUM years.

Bootstrapping

[Animats]

Back in the 1950s, there was a serious attempt by the U.S. Government to address the issue of restarting civilization after a nuclear war. One product of this effort was a set of microfiche and a reader, containing all the basic information needed to reproduce 1950s technology. Large numbers of copies were made and distributed to fallout shelters around the US.

If anyone knows of the whereabouts of such a set, I'd be interested in buying it.

Re:Pretty much the same, I bet

[LAI]

If we had to start over, we'd have to go back to a hardwired computer to design/build a "machine code" one, then use that to build a compiler, etc. It might take less time, but we'd still have to build all the same infrastructure that we build the first time around.

True -- to a point. The rebuilding would be much faster, though, for several reasons.

• We would still have paper media, and other non-digital archives. The principles behind modern chips and circuits do not have to be reinvented, just rebuilt.
• Only prototypes need be built. We don't have to mass-produce a series of Babbage engines, then vacuum-tube colossi, then generation after generation of PCs. We would need only a few older computers in order to develop newer ones.
• Lots of manpower would be used. Think about the number of IT professionals today who would want to contribute in some way to the effort. Personally, I would much rather contribute to the "great rebuilding" than find some line of work I can do without sitting behind a desk getting fat.
• Think about how much support the project would have from Those In Charge. Whether, post-reboot, this turns out to be a new feudal-style ruling class, the storm troopers Bill Gates has been gathering in his basement or the usual gang of idiots, the members would very likely be interested in putting resources into getting their iMacs back and playing some solitaire.

I think the real question here is not how long it would take to rebuild what we have now, but what we would do differently. Would we keep configurations as they are, or would we pay more attention to forward-compatibility? For instance, I doubt any of the new machines built would have a 5 1/4" floppy drive. Perhaps 3 1/2"s would be pre-empted too, in favour of something along the lines of ZIP or even DVD-RW.

The most interesting question to me is, what fundamental changes would be made? Right now there is quite a bit of research done into quantum computing, and into biotech. (I know, because I read it on /.) Would these emerging technologies have any sort of impact on rebuilding our computing infrastructure, or would humanity keep the blinders it's worn for so long and doggedly continue along the same path it was on?

A better way to put this question

[Masem]

I think trying to 'force' this change by a sudden silicon-affecting-only catastophy is a bad way to put it. Let me try another:

Hypothetically, if you did not have to rely on supporting any existing standards, and the resulting computers, software, etc, had 100% acceptence by everyone, and ignoring any problems with implementation of such a system including financal ones, how would you build the computers/hardware/chips/software/network for maximum efficiency, usability, and customizability? Further assume that anyone involved in the production of equipment or software for this 'new' computing system are doing it for the benefit of mankind and not to maximize their profit.

Unforunately, if you ask this question now, then again in a year, and then a year after that, the responses would continue to change drastically, because new computing features continue to evolve every year if not sooner. Three to 4 years ago, the concept of Java's virtual engine took hold. XML as a way for extensible data exchange was big, this year peer-to-peer networking is large. Hardware moves just as fast, from chips that know when to run into idle mode, to USB or Firewire devices, to LCD/flat panel monitors. With the Big Reset as the question above poses, we'd definitely want to include such features in the hardware/software design. What's to say that next year, technology "Foobar" will be the next big thing, and then we'll want to include that? But generally, when you include something new on existing standards, it's typically a hack, even if the standard attempted to allocate space for new innovations (The current discussion on the ATA spec and content protection is a good example of this).

The other thing is that while designing such a system 'for the benefit of mankind' is certainly not a problem, the manufactor of hardware and development of software would be controlled by corporate interests in which the last thing on their mind is "for the benefit of mankind". Again, if the standard is written to allow extensibility, no doubt some manufacture will add their extentions without documentation to try to lock the user into their product, or such that two separate products work effectively links but with other vendors, the products are not as effective -- in other words pulling what MS did with Windows and IE. No matter how much talk we do to try to set Big Reset guidelines, companies will do what is best for their bottom dollar.

Re:I think we'd have more important problems

[Shotgun]

That's right, Man!!

I may be a tech geek, but I'm also 230 all-American pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. If it all ended tomorrow I would run butt-wild naked, kill you all for food and mate with your women. Then I would make me a 733t machine from beach sand that I purify over the campfire that I start from rubbing two sticks together. Doping. We don't need no stinking doping. I would just make up a new type of PN just using leaves from an oak tree or something, just like they do on all those Star Trek episodes. Tech geeks are 733t I say, especially us suave, muscled, manly type.

For the clueless: doping in the process of adding specific amounts of certain impurities to purified silicon in order for it to be a semi-conductor. It's also the process of adding impurities to the human body in order to get fucked-up, but that is a different post.

Re:I think we'd have more important problems

[sesquiped]

> The typical *nix sysadmin or Perl hacker has a
> very specialised set of skills that only counts
> within the narrow environment in which they are
> confortable operating in.

I'd tend to disagree: although the body of knowledge used by a sysadmin is admittedly specialized, that is true of almost any modern profession. However, to be a competent sysadmin or programmer requires lots of general intelligence as well as problem-solving skills, and in general, the ability to think rationally about things and find logical solutions. A hacker would not be "like a fish out of water" at all. He would simply transfer his skills to his new environment, just like everyone else would have to do. And there's a good chance he'd be more successful at the transfer too.

Your assumption that hackers' skills would not transfer, and your unfair generalization of their lack of social skills shows that you have a very limited (and inaccurate) idea of what a hacker actually is.

I'm optimistic...

[adubey]

Unlike some of the other posters, I'm optimistic.

After the great earthquake, San Fransisco was rebuilt in a matter of months. Why? Although all the buildings were totalled, the people (well, most of the people) with the know-how to rebuild it were still around.

Fortunately, in the computer business, many of the people who built the first computers are still around. Even if they were gone, humans often strive to greatness in the face of necessity - engineers, physics and computer scientists could work together for once (ie no "sorry, that's a hardware problem..." ;) to rebuild knowledge of the basics.

How would we do it? Well, I probably don't know enough about hardware to say for sure. At the worst, we could go through the stages we went through the first time, to bootstrap ourselves to the next level, relearning lessons that we didn't think we'd need to know. At best, we can skip some stages (I think basic photolithography could be done without going through the transistor stage).

What would be different? Well, some serious architectural mistakes were made for historical reasons - path dependence and all that (ie the best choice in 1981 may not be the best choice today, but we are locked in by yesterday's decisions). All our chips would probably be RISC VLIW. All COBOL code would be rewritten in Visual BASIC, Java or C++.

However, if we happened to be attacked by aliens while we were rebuilding, well, then all our base would belong to them.

Things to do before starting coding

[SpanishInquisition]

1. Put Bill Gates in a rocket
2. Send the rocket to Pluto
3. Triple the worldwide production of coffee
4. Make sure Bill Gates is still on his way to Pluto.
5. Ask Damian Conway if he could rewrite Perl in Latin (again).
6. Ask project SETI to not listen to the area of the sky near Pluto.
7. Ask Linus Torvalds to rewrite MacOS using only
a piece of wood and some rock.
8. Tell Larry Ellison that if he wants to be as big as Bill Gates, he has to go to Pluto too.
9. Make Richard Stallman the new pope.
10. Make sure those damn monkeys don't get too intelligent.
--

Re:I think we'd have more important problems

[ogre2112]

"But geeks? They would be the first ones to perish. "

Bullshit. You're assuming all geeks are pimple-faces kids, 6 feet tall, weighing 120 pounds, right?

Just because I sit in front of a terminal all day doesn't mean I couldn't hunt you down and
rightiously kick your ass to feed my newfound cannabalism.

Archives

[mortenf]

This is actually not just something to speculate about - it's already a problem!
Archiving services and institutions have problems with 5 1/4 inch floppies, old cassettes (can YOU still read that old code from your C64?) and tapes from extinct drives.
By now they also have problems with the multitude of different text formats (WP 5.1 anyone?).
Maybe platform independent formats like XML will be the cure...

--

Re:Pretty much the same, I bet

[crgrace]

THIS is your question?? What would we do differently?? A better question would be HOW. With no computers, try designing (let alone manufacturing) a chip.

Actually, people used to design chips without computers all the time. Computers are used to make the process more efficient. They are necessary now only because of the extreme complexity of current chips, not because of any inherent need of computers.

Basically, we would re-populate the world in a very similar way that we design a compiler. We would design a very simple computer using very simple gate-level chips that don't need computers to be designed. Then, we would build the computer (it would be as large as a mainframe). We could then use this computer to design a more powerful computer. And so on. This is like compiler design in that a very rudimentary compiler is implemented and then used to compile its own components.

I'm a professional integrated circuit designer, and I can tell you that there are a lot of useful circuits that I could design without a computer. For high performance stuff, of course I would need a powerful computer for extensive simulation, but designers could easily design simple analog and digital circuits without them.

As for the semiconductor processing needed to make these simple chips, a lot of manual fab equipment exists, mostly in university teaching and research labs. While we would have to put the sub-micron fab lines at Intel in storage, I can tell you that we could build simple 2 micron chips by hand at UC Santa Barbara TODAY.

In summary, this is not something to worry about. Because, presumably, human knowledge would not be erased, I think we could bootstrap outselves back to modern technology in about 10 years. It would take that long only because of the many generations of simpler computers used to design more powerful computers required.

Pretty much the same, I bet

[OlympicSponsor]

"...fries all microprocessors and scrambles the contents of all existing ROMs, disks, CD-ROMs, and any other machine-readable media in all computers. And the same fate falls on all high-tech manufacturing equipment."

Got it. All computers and related machines and materials are toast.

"What would we do differently if we didn't have fifty years worth of legacy systems to continue maintaining?"

THIS is your question?? What would we do differently?? A better question would be HOW. With no computers, try designing (let alone manufacturing) a chip.

Which is why my answer is: we'd be pretty much in the same boat. Things like high-level languages and XML are luxuries afforded by cheap, high-speed computing power. If we had to start over, we'd have to go back to a hardwired computer to design/build a "machine code" one, then use that to build a compiler, etc. It might take less time, but we'd still have to build all the same infrastructure that we build the first time around.

Remember a lot of the "new" technology around today was invented decades ago--but only now became cheap or popular. Computer people in the 50's weren't idiots--they just didn't have computers to help them.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot

Re:We're safe

[Faulty Dreamer]

Even though we all know that Bob (or Mr. Abooey to the rest of the trolls) is completely full of shit, he does bring up an interesting point.

The fact is, it would take one hell of a devestating event to cause complete destruction of ALL computers and computer systems. We have government offices/shelters all over the world built deep, deep underground to save the 'important' people in the event of nuclear attack. I would think there would also be at least a few computers present in these shelters. Nobody can imagine living without computers nowadays. And if the end times come, and humanity is wiped out, we want to make sure that the important government officials can still create massive amounts of paperwork in their locked-away shelters. What better way than with computers?

Take that, and the fact that we have a (at least semi) permanent space-station which is probably filled with computer equipment, both high-grade industrial type stuff and commodity PC hardware (don't a lot of astronauts have laptops with them?), anything short of a full-on Earth destroying event (and one that destroys the space station with it) would probably not be able to completely wipe out all computers.

But, if we are talking theoretical, I think it would be a good thing if we had to go back to the beginning. It might make people a little more concious of the fact that there is life outside of computers. Granted, we would all be too busy hunting and fishing to worry about recreating our computers. If all electronics were wiped out, there would be no electricity (aren't all power plants computer controlled?), no cars (how many cars don't have computers in them now?), no TV (OH THE HUMANITY!), no radio, and basically we would be thrust back into a sort of dark ages. The ones to survive would be the ones that can manage to hunt and gather on their own. There would be no massive transports, there would be no infrastructure for government to 'sieze control' in a situation like that. It would be, um, interesting to say the least. And it would serve to clean up the current gene pool a bit.

But, what sort of event would it take to selectively remove all electronics completely from the Earth in such a way that there would be no way to quickly recreate them? I'm having real problems coming up with a possible scenario that doesn't include extinction of all life, at least all human life.

This may come as a shock...

[whanau]

But the majority (75% of world population) would notice little or no effect. These are people forgotten by the "tech revolution". Their day to day struggle is finding clean water, not debugging lines of code. People seem to forget that only 1% of the world owns a computer, and computer reliant services (eg. telephone, water treatment) would go largely untouched, as again these services reach a desperate few.

Living in a third world country I see this everyday. This event would probably bring a mild blessing- hopefully the western world would see it as a chance to redirect its goals