

Charles Stross on the future (and gaming) in 2030 - bkudria
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/05/login_2009_keynote_gaming_in_t.html

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mnemonicsloth
Sigh.

One problem with futurism is that the size of the subject requires you to pass
over all the little throwaway projects (like the ARPAnet in the late 1960s)
that are two or three incarnations away from being world-shaking.

For example, although heat dissipation and power requirements make it
impractical to run whole processors faster than a few GHz, it's possible to
get amazing analog performance out of 20-nm MOSFETs. Ubiquitous Millimeter-
wave radar is one obvious application, but IR-frequency amplifiers and
sampling aren't out of the question. As anybody who's taken an undergraduate
organic chemistry course can tell you, an IR photon has roughly the same
energy as a quantum of vibrational energy in an organic molecule.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_spectroscopy>

In other words, imagine a camera that can tell you the chemical composition of
anything it photographs...

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tophat02
Yes, the article is quite conservative, but on the upside, you can clearly
tell he's talking not only to the people listening to his speech today, but
also directly to readers who may be revisiting this speech in 2032.

As you know, we seem to have a fascination with reading long ago predictions
of the "future" that is now today... and we really like to laugh at them.

I believe his tone is one of "I know you're reading this in 2032, so I'm going
to try my best not to be silly."

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sho
An interesting, if somewhat pessimistic, speech. One quibble: he states the
size of "an atom" as being around 1nm. I thought it was more like 0.4nm, if
he's talking about silicon anyway. Not a game-changing difference, but still.

And he also seems to dismiss rather perfunctorily the promise of upcoming
technology and techniques - the most egregious example being the scorn he
pours on the potential of 3D computers, which he seems to think is merely
stacking a few photolithographed dies on top of each other. I think this is
somewhat misguided; most of what I've read on the subject talks about
building, via nanotechnological (or even biological) assembly, true three-
dimensional structures, with the massive increase in connectivity this allows.
I'm by no means an expert on the topic but if you want a hint of evidence that
this technique might be useful, I'd ask you to consider that treasure trove of
as-yet unattainable computing technology: the human brain.

Good talk though, thought-provoking, although what it really provokes me to do
is argue with the author ...

(edit: oops, I was thinking of the _radius_ of Si. Now I have even less of a
point; oh well)

~~~
listic
What exactly do you call pessimistic? The assumption that Moore's law will hit
a hard wall and soon we won't be able to ride it's back any longer? I, for
one, would be glad if the days of "extensive agriculture" in computing, and
games in particular, will be over; maybe game designers will then have time to
seek the better form of the game, instead of producing cliche-ridden sequels
beefed with the current technology. But the article doesn't seem to promise
anything like that: if anything, advances in mobile devices, bandwith, changes
of national and age demographics promise us even more of a wild ride we
experienced previously!

Or, do you call pessimistic (conservative, I would call it) the assumption
that by 2030, kids won't be growing their "pocket-sized dragons" or the
Singularity won't happen?

So, what exactly do you call pessimistic?

~~~
jerf
When the author himself labels the assumptions pessimistic (more or less, I
think it's a fair word), I think it's fair to say they are "pessimistic":

"I have short-sightedly ignored the possibility that we're going to come up
with a true human-equivalent artificial intelligence, or some other enabling
mechanism that constitutes a breakthrough on the software or content creation
side and lets us offload all the hard work. No HAL-9000s here, in other words:
no singularity (beyond which our current baseline for predictions breaks
down). Which means, in the absence of such an AI, that the most interesting
thing in the games of 2030 will be, as they are today, the other human
players.

"I am assuming that nothing better comes along. This is the most questionable
assumption of all. Here in the world of human beings — call it monkeyspace —
we are all primates who respond well to certain types of psychological
stimulus. We're always dreaming up new ways to push our in-built reward
buttons, and new media to deliver the message. Television came along within
fifty years of cinema and grabbed a large chunk of that particular field's
lunch. Cinema had previously robbed theatre's pocket. And so on. Today, MMO
gaming is the new kid on the block, growing ferociously and attracting media
consumers from older fields. I can't speculate on what might eat the computer
games field's lunch -- most likely it'll be some new kind of game that we
don't have a name for yet. But one thing's for sure: by 2030, MMOs will be
seen as being as cutting edge as 2D platform games are in 2009.

"In fact, I'm making a bunch of really conservative assumptions that are
almost certainly laughable. For all I know, the kids of 2030 won't be playing
with computers any more — as such — rather they'll be playing with their
nanotechnology labs and biotech in a box startups, growing pocket-sized
dragons and triffids and suchlike. Nothing is going to look quite the way we
expect, and in a world where the computing and IT revolution has run its
course, some new and revolutionary technology sector is probably going to
replace it as the focus of public attention."

