Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Uncle Steve Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: I Feel Old Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 19:46:35 -0500 Organization: Friends of the Galactic Collective Lines: 84 Message-ID: <4f7334cedbde077-de60d@gmail.com> References: <9dcde262-7129-4a8f-b034-105b67d61cf5@googlegroups.com> <20160101213359.c4fa91b81ade324004208803@eircom.net> <6080e724-4d4a-4f96-a0b6-06d6c86668d8@googlegroups.com> <7db2ed440bca8c0-13432@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="451d67796bf6fcf36587c3e0e2ac5633"; logging-data="6759"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18Zrjqfnf114ADWg/ztY12n" User-Agent: nn 6.7.3 Content-Length: 4078 Cancel-Lock: sha1:p9QIA8/5K84sbmrLHW6+wr6xyik= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:156171 On Mon, Jan 04, 2016 at 06:21:00PM +0100, Morten Reistad wrote: > In article <7db2ed440bca8c0-13432@gmail.com>, > Uncle Steve wrote: > >On Fri, Jan 01, 2016 at 03:57:43PM -0800, Quadibloc wrote: > >> On Friday, January 1, 2016 at 3:00:04 PM UTC-7, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote: > >> > >> > Yes we have come a very long way indeed. It makes you wonder what > >> > another 35 years will bring. > >> > >> Of course, the pace of progress is slowing a bit. Dennard scaling has already > >> gone by the boards, and Moore's Law has only a bit more life left in it. > > > >Well, we haven't hit the atomic wall yet. While we seem to be > >reaching the limits of bulk manufacturing processes, the atom-by-atom > >approach remains to be explored. This represents something of a > >discontinuity to the stately progression of Moore's law, but I am too > >ignorant of science to project its limitation in terms of processor > >clock speed, information density, heat dissipation, etc. > > The first real, hard wall we are going to see is one of money. As the > fabs get tuned for smaller, faster layouts they go more than linearly > up in investment cost. Even IBM and Intel have huge issues about financing > their current ones, and even small/faster ones are going to take a lot > of depreciation time; i.e. the expansion will slowly peter to a halt > a good bit before the fundamental physical constants are reached. > > But we may see one-off, "hand made" chips emerge at mainframe prices > on fabs that don't support industrial scales. > > All predicted by The Economist a decade ago. I would think that fabs would follow the general trend of faster/ smaller/cheaper. ISTM that current fabs are so expensive because they represent the absolute leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing. So while the feature-size limit will remain a barrier to process technology (absent a breakthrough) we ought to see the eventual advent of the workshop chip fab. (This is an approximation; other scenarios are possible.) > >> However, other areas of technological progress are about to start their sigmoid > >> curves. > >> > >> So maybe 35 years from now, computers will only be a "little" better than they > >> are today (that will still be a significant improvement, just not as much as > >> further exponential growth would indicate)... but that CISPR stuff might lead > >> to cures for nearly all genetic diseases, and basically eternal youth through > >> rebuilding telomeres... > > > >I came to the realization some time ago that the natural apotheosis of > >medicine was the eventual cure of disease and ageing. Looking back it > >seems a rather obvious projection of capability, and I wonder whether > >some of the ancients (in Rome, for instance) looked upon technological > >developments of their age and imagined in some dim way the potential > >we now see looming. > > Well, with people in better health in higher age we will have to do > something about pensions. The medical industry need not worry, though. > Medication generally go up with age, even if they handle the ailments > a lot better than the precursors did a generation ago. The medical instruct still needs to move from a primary revenue model based on treating illness to prevention and cure as the main goal. > >> One way or another, the future will be exciting. > > > >That's one way of putting it. > > I see faintly a society of "peace, freedom and prosperity for all" emerge > in the far future. Could happen. But there is a metric buttload of religion and politics in the way, and that is unlikely to clear from the road in the forseeable future. And there are dystopian scenarios wherein a political bloc such as a loony religious faction within the intelligence community achieve a coup and dictate mortality as part of their political/religious platform. There are people today who hold similarly regressive values, doing evil for evil's sake as a means of marking their page in history. -- We all cannot be intelligent, but at least we can all be polite.