Arthur C Clarke refuses to make a firm commitment on the shape of the next few decades. It is a rather common patern to find throughout history that individual 'revolutions' would be spurred by advancing technology. (I think that everyone knows what I mean here, we had the socio-political revolution, the industrial revolution, the information revolution...) Mr. Clarke doesn't want to pin down a specific field of human endeavour or specific technological area which will define the next half century. He hints at several tantalising possibilities: A nanotech revolution or a zero-point engergy revolution would be giant advancements and are even quite feasable. However, given the immensity of History it seems unlikely that they will all happen at once the way he seems to imply. This century shows us that the behaviour pattern for society is one big development at a time. This 21st century he presents would be like having the rennaisance, the industrial revolution, the information age, and the decent of man from the trees all at the same time.
The real question is: what is the driving force behind Moore's Law. If the reason for the heretofore seen doubling time is something intrinisic in the process by which the chips are made, then the time of Moore's Law may indeed be drawing to a close. There is no real controversy about the fact that there is a hard bottom to lithography -- it can't continue to quantum dimentions. However, it seems somewhat unlikely that there is a doubling time implicit in a process of manufacture. More likely, the reason that there is a reliable pattern to processor devellopment is that there is such a large industry behind it. Once you have a sufficient number of people working independantly, statistical forces insure that each new breakthrough will inevitably be made with an approximately constant rate.
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Arthur C Clarke refuses to make a firm commitment on the shape of the next few decades. It is a rather common patern to find throughout history that individual 'revolutions' would be spurred by advancing technology. (I think that everyone knows what I mean here, we had the socio-political revolution, the industrial revolution, the information revolution...) Mr. Clarke doesn't want to pin down a specific field of human endeavour or specific technological area which will define the next half century. He hints at several tantalising possibilities: A nanotech revolution or a zero-point engergy revolution would be giant advancements and are even quite feasable. However, given the immensity of History it seems unlikely that they will all happen at once the way he seems to imply. This century shows us that the behaviour pattern for society is one big development at a time. This 21st century he presents would be like having the rennaisance, the industrial revolution, the information age, and the decent of man from the trees all at the same time.
The real question is: what is the driving force behind Moore's Law. If the reason for the heretofore seen doubling time is something intrinisic in the process by which the chips are made, then the time of Moore's Law may indeed be drawing to a close. There is no real controversy about the fact that there is a hard bottom to lithography -- it can't continue to quantum dimentions. However, it seems somewhat unlikely that there is a doubling time implicit in a process of manufacture. More likely, the reason that there is a reliable pattern to processor devellopment is that there is such a large industry behind it. Once you have a sufficient number of people working independantly, statistical forces insure that each new breakthrough will inevitably be made with an approximately constant rate.