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The Future of Computing
webglee writes "What will the relationship between computing and science bring us over the next 15 years?
That is the topic addressed by the web focus special of Nature magazine on the Future of Computing in Science. Amazingly, all the articles are free access, including a commentary by Vernor Vinge titled 2020 Computing: The creativity machine."
It is easy to understimate the speed at which technology is changing. Pending brick walls (insurmountable laws of physics), computing in 2020 should be absurdly different from that of today.According to Ray Kurzweil: "An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."
Is this the same Nature magazine that made stuff up to suit it's purposes about Wikipedia?
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I'm not very concerned with progress in hardware. My 3 year old computer runs pretty much anything just fine, and I expect it to continue doing so for a few years to come, at least. Right now, I'm severely disappointed by the lack of ideas in technology. There's only so far you can take word processing, e-mail, scheduling, etc. Enough with 'innovation' in those areas, already!
What I'd really like to see is improved content creation tools. How about 3D scanners, so Joe Artmajor can easily scan his sculptures into modelling programs? They exist, but they aren't on the consumer market yet. I'd rather see that than another few years of GPU speed wars.
This has more to do with the fact that people are becoming increasingly blase about the potential of coputing. at the moment, i am actually undertaking a project to try and design a human/computer interface that is totally removed from what engelbart came up with back in '68 - we're trying, essentially, to show people that thinking outside the box is the best way to improve the use of said box. computers these days are capable of amazing things in 3-dimensional graphics, but we're still constrained by the 2-dimensional 'navigation' methods. instead of breaking barriers, and then returning to safe territory, how's about we burn the return bridges a bit? what i (and my group) are doing is to re-invent man/machine interaction; we're not, strictly speaking, doing anything very new; we're just trying to do it differently. the problem that people have imposed on themselves is a desperate love of throwbacks; i'm sitting here, typing on a keyboard not entirely dissimilar to the typewriters of the 1880s. we've got a machine that can calculate variances in chaos theory sitting under our desks, and we're still treating them as if they were mechanical, hand-milled machines. we need to learn to progress in of ourselves, as well as our technologies.
http://xkcd.com/313/
In other words, it all comes down to government interference in the market. In the absence of government, there could be no such thing as "contraband" or "prohibition". The only thing prohibited would be coercion, and the only thing mandated would be voluntary association -- exactly the way human nature intended it to be.
The truth is you don't know which technologies will take or why. Sometimes you think X should be popular but it doesn't catch on for 10 years after you found it. Or something you blow off as insignificant comes out of nowhere to dominate a market.
Although I have noticed one small arena that tends to be a good predictor of the wider market. If p0rn distributors pick it up, then you can almost bet it's going to be the next insanely great thing. I remember taking a training class for a streaming video server in Atlanta a few years ago. Half my classmates were from p0rn distributors. Which definitely made break time more interesting.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We haven't seen a boom in space because we're lacking new propulsion
This is a commonly repeated urban legend. The truth is that we have propulsion methods pouring out of our ears; many of which are far better choices for manned flight than Ion engines.
The biggest problem has been the $500,000,000 that gets sunk into every shuttle flight. It eats up the money that's useful for better space craft. The next biggest problem is the ISS. It eats up money without accomplishing its original goal. (To be a launching pad to the moon. Unfortunately, it's in the wrong orbit.) The last big problem has been NASA and the governmetn's insistence on pie-in-the-sky technologies (*cough* Space Shuttle, X-33, NASP, etc.) rather than building on the infrastructure already in place.
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