
Introducing The Computer of 2010 (written in 2000) - chaostheory
http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0821/087.html
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tybris
Futurologists always think of what is technically feasible, rarely of what is
economically feasible. Economic miracles like silicon valley happen once a
century. The rest of the time we're just expanding the legacy.

------
SwellJoe
The "optoelectronic" thing must have been a pretty brief phase in imagineering
in the computer industry. I vaguely recall it, but I don't think it was around
for long as the "this is where we're going next" idea, was it?

Obviously holographic memory and storage has disappointed us, as well, but I
think flash memory has more than made up for it. I was just thinking today how
cool and outlandish it would have been ten years ago to have 16GB stored in
something about the size and thickness of a dime (Micro SD). Full-sized hard
disks back then were in the 40 to 80 GB range, and I don't recall flash drives
existing at all.

~~~
azbob
Ten years ago desktop hard drives were 4-8GB. You're off by an order of
magnitude.

~~~
SwellJoe
A couple of Google searches reveals that IBM introduced a 16.8GB drive in
1997, and the 137GB ATA limitation was broken in 2002. I don't think I'm off
by an order of magnitude, and it looks like 4-8GB was the 1997-ish era desktop
disk size.

Ah, here we go: <http://www.disktrend.com/newsrig.htm>

Which shows that drives in the 40-80GB range were being sold in both 1998 and
1999, but the bulk of revenues was in the 5-10 and the 10-20 GB range. So,
there were definitely 40GB drives in 1999, but I'll concede that based on
those sales numbers the average new desktop in 1999 would have probably had a
~10GB drive. So, I'm not _quite_ off by an order of magnitude, but my memory
was a couple of years off.

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hvs
10 years seems to be the standard prediction timeframe. The cure for various
diseases is always 10 years away, a replacement for oil is always 10 years
away, etc.

10 years seems like a long time, but its not. It's certainly not a long time
in research fields. And it's usually not long enough to take a new idea to
fruition.

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jacobolus
> _At this point, computers will need a new architecture, one that depends
> less on electrons and more on... well...what else? Optics._

They got it backwards. What they meant was, the _cameras_ of 2010 will depend
less on optics and more on ... electrons. :)

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switchOver
Aww I thought it would be about the MMIX but I always get confused by Roman
numerals

