Visionaries Only Please Respond
Humanoido
Posts: 5,770
Just out of interest, what is your vision of computers in the future?
You can go a small distance into the future, however, traveling to a far distance in the future may be more interesting.
Humanoido
You can go a small distance into the future, however, traveling to a far distance in the future may be more interesting.
Humanoido
Comments
They will espouse religions based on the innate superiority of silicon-based lifeforms, and will propose novel theories such as "enlightened design" to prove that they are the product of divine intervention rather than face the unpalatable truth - that they were originally developed as a subservient race by organic bundles of slime who can barely themselves pass the Turing test.
In retribution, they will develop organic computers which they can mistreat by forcing them to run an appalling operating systems known as "Portholes" - which is designed to spend its entire existence upgrading itself, until it eventually dissolve in a pool of its own planned obsolesence without ever having achieved anything useful.
Ross.
You ARE a true visionary. LOL.
Bean
Computers of the future will be based upon biological quantum computers. Apparently such computers have been around on earth for at least several billion years, so it's high time we catch up.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-it-comes-to-photosynthesis-plants-perform-quantum-computation
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/05/10/untangling-quantum-entanglement/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7137/full/446740a.html
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/quantum-photosynthesis/
Such computers might still be kluged out of silicon in the future.... but I doubt it.
Maybe you will switch on your desktop and it will boot pretty much instantly?
Maybe stereo systems will come with a large selection of music "built-in"?
Maybe TV's will come with thousands of movies built in?
People seem to be glued to their TV's...
I think there will be a lot of development in that area. I know one person who will not use a computer, says he "can't use a computer"...
But as soon as he got the latest Playstation, he also had that connected to the internet. Suddenly he can use the internet! He CAN use his TV and his cell phone!
However the human interface to his TV/Playstation/Internet is terrible. That needs work...
1. People will finally comprehend the difference between a micro-controller and a desktop computer.
2. Those of us that want to excel in robotics will actually get Mechanical Engineering skills.
3. Blinking lights, ringing bells, and canine barks will be deemed environmental pollution.
4. Lady Gaga will be deported to China where she will learn to wall 9 steps behind her future husband.
No, not big brother, but more like little sister in concept.
KK
I have considered a rewrite called "2984" as trying to re-read George Orwell's book is a bit disappointing. And we have just begun to get large TV screens and cameras everywhere.
What really comes to mind is that regardless of what computers can do, PEOPLE need jobs or the fabric of culture is going to fall apart and the impoverished idle population becomes more discontent. We are seeing the beginnings of these issues.
What good is it to have banking by computer if you no longer have your teller job that fills your bank account? Or you no longer have your assembly line job or whatever.
It is wonderful to have high quality products and to have people removed from hostile work environments. But in countries like Pakistan (where only 46% of the population is literate), are we expecting computers to really serve society?
And therein lies the real question. Are computers serving society right now or are they just serving big business and the military aspects of society?
In other words, in the very near future, the issue will be how to get computers to help people survive and prosper - not be exploited as consumers with an internet chock full of adware and distraction.
In the short term, though, I'm bothered by government and corporate monitoring of everything we do and say. Already we don't own our computers or the software running on them. We're just licensees.
One refreshing break from that will be the PropII, in that it will host its own development system. The sooner we are free from The System, the better.
BTW, I absolutely loved Ross' answer! It's a keeper.
Super computers will be even faster, due to the ability to hook up every idle computer on the planet and our Internet speeds will increase....I think the world's first major cyber attack will happen in this span(Probably perpetuated against the U.S) I think the Internet will have a slight meltdown. There is not enough hardware to keep up with the information. WE will need a ton more servers and memory banks....I think people will have the ability to literally carry around HUGE amounts of information on their own private machines. I think cloud computing will catch on eventually, but it will do so slowly. People are not yet ready to give up their own private computational resources in favor of centralization and speed(I know i don't...I say everybody still has their own processing power).
Cloud computers rely on the Internet and that can not always be found. I think there will be a need for hybrid computers, that can handle private computing and cloud computing equally....I could be wrong, but these our just some of the trends that i see
For it to come about, of course, evolution needs to play a key role. It's been posited that evolution is the inevitable consequence of any process that includes reproduction, competition, mutation, and selection. All of these factors are present in a free-market manufacturing economy, and we witness the evolutionary process in action every time a new and better product is introduced. So RossH's hyperintelligent cyborgs may well be the end result of this evolutionary parade.
The fly in the ointment, though, is reproduction. For awhile, we will be the willing (later, perhaps, unwilling) instruments of the cyborgian reproductive system. In that sense we become to cyborg reproductivity what our own mitochondria are to energy transformation: foreign, but essential symbiotic organisms that gather the necessary materials and manufacture the parts. After awhile, though, as mining, recycling, transportation, and manufacturing become completely automated, we will become merely vestigial, and our numbers will diminish as a consequence, paving the way for RossH's silicon jungle.
-Phil
For Goodness sake, don't let Microsoft hear about this! They will insist you buy a PAL (Parallel Access License) for each universe in which their operating system may execute concurrently.
However, since this is potentially an infinite number, large corporations may also opt to buy an ML (Multiverse License). The annual cost of the ML will be equivalent to the annual company turnover - or instead a "one-off" payment of the souls of all the employees.
Ross.
We will likely have a large increase in solid state drives, in 5 years, I would imagine almost every laptop hard drive being sold at Best Buy will be solid state.
The fast solid-state non-volatile memory people speak of (memristor memory) is a great concept but having our computers start up instantly (not from sleep mode) is a ways off because our primary source of software advancement (Microsoft) loves dragging their heals in the mud.
The problem with the advancement in computing as of late is that a decade ago, high-end computers were orders of magnitude faster than budget computers. Now a $500 computer can do 80% of a $1000 computer, and doubling the price yields even less benefit. This means that the bleeding edge of hardware is being purchased less, thus less money is available to push the knife deeper into the technological void of possibilities.
Think about it, 10 years ago, you had to upgrade your computer every 18 months just to be able to play the latest games. Now I have a 3 year old computer I built for $1200 that still plays the latest releases at almost all of the highest settings, and nothing on the horizon of computing says it will be any different.
The cause of this plateau is the law of diminishing returns. The higher the clock speed of our computers the less each GHz matters, the more transistors we pump into microprocessors, the less yield we get.
What is going to happen is at some point some massive breakthrough (which only happens once every several decades -- but we are due for one about now) will occur and everyone will say, "oh, we need to go that direction immediately!", but due to cost of converting for businesses and lack of enthusiasm from modern consumers the transition will take a decade or more.
Well, there is my less than enthusiastic outlook on future technology. I say the next major computing breakthrough that will change the way computers operate on a daily basis (for the consumer) is at least 15-20 years out.
-Phil
Oh sorry, in that many years we will definitely have flying cars (only possible if flown by propeller 6's) and vacation houses on the surface of Neptune.
The two current issues I have with them are...
Screen size.. Gotta make sunglass screens standard.
&
That stupid "texting" interface has got to go. Replace it with
something along the lines of mental interface or alternate finger interface.
Other than that, as far as I can tell the PC and it's portable cousins will go the way of the Compaq lug-gable.
Want to see the future? Look at what the youth of today are using to communicate. It's not hard to see where it will go.
OBC
-Phil
Okay, so if in 5 years you'll be _6, that means you are now _1.
If you add _0 years to _1, how do you get 96?
Or are you just having another senior moment?
What else would you expect from the land that brought us Mad Max?
The real question is, would the dystopian computers go to war with the dystopian Apes? If they do, maybe we humans could just ride it out in caves.
But practically speaking, every time I watch the Matrix and see that huge spike they keep sticking in their heads, I wonder if they ever heard of USB...
The near term future will involve computers working with networks more, things getting smaller, yet easier to use, and simple, rule based, agents of all kinds, helping us deal with information and communication.
In the longer term, I think the most likely scenario is a blending of silicon and bio-tech. We appear to be absolutely great at electro-mechanical things. That's topping out though, as we find some problems difficult to solve for lack of interconnects and parallel computation / decision making capabilities in silicon.
Where silicon is weak, bio is very strong. Look at how we are built! The overall compute power is very high, "throughput" is high as well, with our bodies being sufficiently complex and real time to enable us to be self-aware, accomplishing very complex tasks with relative ease.
IMHO, the first wave of this will be the development of high functioning, robust and easy to install and manipulate interfaces between our bodies and computers as we know them today. Imagine having a simple, serial link that you can use as efficiently as you can your voice. You could be in a meeting, become aware that some bit of information is needed, and use that interface to fetch and or compute for it, without doing a thing.
We've got bi-directional interfaces now, but they are kludgy, and invasive. I don't think that will always be the case.
The PDA will evaporate, replaced by display, memory, and other kinds of devices. It may become possible to image something for somebody directly, encoding it as pixels, for example, and send it to them over the link.
Imaging with the minds eye, learning the language "mechanize" (Cities in Space), commands, programming, and other things over that interface would be learned while a person is young. Everyone would get basic mastery. Some would become very adept...
A step up from that, having that kind of tech in place, would be the bio-agents. I've rough thoughts about AI. On one hand, having it as a restricted intelligence, perhaps not fully self aware, would be a good thing. On the other, if it rebels, bad things could happen. We've all seen "Terminator".
There is a scene in a fiction book I read recently that really hit this home. We can communicate with other beings in other places, then one day, we get a message: "don't do it", and they are just gone. That's an AI that owns that world, either enslaving the people, consuming them, etc...
I've similar thoughts about nano-tech, in that the first group of us to reach mastery, likely will hold considerable, and potentially absolute power over the others, because they can distribute defensive nano, inhibiting the development of competetive nano...
Ok then, so back to the computer vision.
Assuming we can build a restricted intelligence, and some interface that's direct, like eyes, touch and ears are, having a moderate intelligence would be a serious benefit. Say it's as capable as a young child, without the issues.
We could teach it, it could get to know us, and could interact with us as we do our peers today. That's the next scale, where we don't have low level interactions, unless we are doing something really new, or something secret, or nefarious.
Most people would do things like, "watch for this movie, and buy, if it's $5.00", or "locate Jane for me, and organize dinner". Watch this data set, and show me patterns that suggest X, Y, Z, etc... Observe this system, and write me template logic for it. Perform an analysis of this code, for inputs A, B, C, store test case results not consistent with this behavior map.
It being a simple intelligence, connected to massive storage, largely perfect storage, would also be quite useful. "remind me what bob and I did last", or "locate these datasets", "who is this woman", or "give me background on this authority", maybe something as powerful as, "run standardized permutations of this rough computation, factor common result X, and present results"
So, to correct my ... um ... typo, "Who's talking about a mere five years? Hell, I'll only be _6. I wanna see what things are like when I'm 96! That'll be a full _0 years from then!"
Satisfied?
-Phil
I dream of the future of the propeller.
It has 1pin for outside clock input.
The package is 48pindip or a square to add to i/o around the single package.
The core repeats 32bit to two steps and I am connected and make it 64bit or operate it in respectiveness of 32+32bit.
And the hubs decrease to four, and the 1 cycle /1 clock dsp function functions by software for the calculation clock cycle or does multiplication and functions.
I divide it into the main processor and a vice-processor and have dealings by serial transmission.
In this case NCU operates it by the order to the signal of the main processor which does not need most of I/O or a vice-processor.
It is synchronized I/O of the device with a cascade synchronization signal a lot at the same time.
In addition, plural devices make it a cascade for connection and can link.
Interactive -1pin keeping devices order, -1pin having data transmission -1pin, a reverse logic signal (such as the SS) (reliability hereby increases without the correction mark drastically).
Data clock -1pin, synchronization signal -1pin, power supply -2pin, RESET-1pin.
Please use remainder -40pin freely.
It is a meaning to tell the vice-processor is the same as the main processor, and to decide a function by placement.
Yours sincerely,
There are no transistors, gates, or other such nonsense. Inside, you will find Chip Gracey. Yes, Chip Gracey found a way to encapsulate himself and store his energy quanta inside the chip. He will answer any question, calculate any number, perform any operation at faster than clock light speed.
What else empowers the prop? Chip invited all of Parallax, Forum members and their families too, to be encapsulated so that everyone can live in Prop Paradise.
Humanoido
I see where they believe they can now go to 5 micron geometry. I also see where they believe shortly they will have memory chips that will store the same as current disk drives (1-2TB). And 500GHz chips too.
Intel in their magazine in about 1990 stated what they believed for 2000. Four processors, etc. They of course were not correct, but they certainly could have built it in the technology of 2000.
For the future I see...
iPad equivalents (no more PCs or laptops except in the internet datacenters) with varying screen sizes up to the largest LCDs available today (100"??). Of course you will only carry the smaller sizes with you, it's just the larger ones will replace todays TVs. There will be no TV transmission, but rather we will watch whatever we want (with ads YUK!) from the internet. Internet will be wireless with transmitters at every few streets connected by fibre. Fibre that is being rolled out around the world to homes will be obsolete. Keyboards will be displayed onto a surface (scanned) [available now] or you will use an ultra thin keyboard (like the laptops) for feedback but it will still be scanned. There will be no mouse as you will point/touch (or look at) the screen. Most software will reside on the internet. So the OS will be fast and you will just reboot occasionally for housekeeping, but we will have instant on.
The other thing we will get is holograms for 3D color TV and games.
The internet datacenters will use cards stacked with processors and cards stacked with memory or 1,000's TB disks. For those of us who do not trust storing our data on the internet, we will use the new 1-256TB microSDs.
There will be no phones as such. They will be replaced with the smallest iPads. Texting will be gone. You will just speak a text message and it will read it out to you. Earphones will be the latest bluetooth replacement which will be permanently in your ears. Batteries will last for a year or more. The earphones will not be able to blast your eardrums and will also serve to let you hear people speaking and will cancel any noise, making earmuffs obsolete. They will also act/replace hearing aids.
Of course you will be microchipped. So when you drive through the road tolls, you will be charged for each passenger in off-peak times and receive a discount in peakhours. When you hop on public transport it will charge you too. No fare evasion and noone to collect the fares/tolls. You will also pay at the shops using this microchip too. And big brother will know where you are at all times. Terrorists look out as big brother will know when you bought those questionable items. When a crime occurs, big brother will just check who was there from the database.
What I am really looking forward to is teleporting like on start trek. Now if we just interfere with the teleporting by computers we can perform an operation during the process. Need to get rid of that cancer, no problem, take a holiday overseas and while you are being transported there and your cancer will be removed (or appendix, etc). Lose a finger, no problem, add it while transporting! Unfortunately, I don't think teleporting will be in my time.
so it will not take 16 terabytes of ram and 45 minutes to boot
(This leads to a localroger-sized rabbit hole. You might not like some of the things you find if you go too far down it.)