
The Future Of Computing Will Be Good Enough - nreece
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163607/the_future_of_computing_will_be_good_enough.html
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ryanwaggoner
This article is another approach to the same idea expressed in this article
from a day or two ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569131>

These kinds of comments about how our technology is "good enough" and will
thus slow its evolutionary pace seem eerily similar to proclamations from a
few decades ago that there would only be need for a few computers in the
world, no computer would ever need more than a few kilobytes of memory, etc.

Do you need a 50-core CPU with 512GB of memory to run Firefox? No. However,
it's a mistake to assume that tomorrow's technology will be used for the same
applications as today's technology. Faster, cheaper, smaller, cooler, more
efficient hardware will enable entirely new uses for computing that we can't
really see right now.

~~~
derefr
We thought of [cheap, ubiquitous] video phones 50 years ago, and finally had
the tech to pull them off [Skype] five years ago. What computer-related
advances are we thinking of right now that we'll only have the tech for in
another 45 years? I can't think of anything off-hand, and I haven't read any
futurists thinking of them either. Apparently, technology is harder to predict
than it used to be.

~~~
aka-
autonomous (even flying) cars need HW and SW advances. People have been
banging on about brain-computer interfaces and augumented reality for years,
both of which needs some serious hardware and design advances to be really
usable (and would people be happy with wearing an OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator?
lol). Futurist Michio Kaku reckons we might be close to force fields and
telepathy.

~~~
asciilifeform
> autonomous (even flying) cars need HW and SW advances

Actually, it appears that the only thing autonomous cars would need is the
removal of traditional, unpredictable cars from the roads. (Good luck with
that...)

