
Physical Limits of Computation (2009) - kercker
https://lwn.net/Articles/286233/
======
terminalcommand
Side note: comments at the bottom on singularity and moore's law are IMHO also
highly interesting.

Direct link:
[https://lwn.net/Articles/286739/](https://lwn.net/Articles/286739/)

~~~
grondilu
> To be blunt, the singularity phenomenon is the quasi-religious expectation
> that a brighter tomorrow through technology is "certain" and universal
> deliverance of mankind is just around the corner.

This sounds like a mis-representative view of the Singularity. Indeed some
people think the Singularity will bring some kind of techno-utopia, they get
excited about living forever and so on, but this only is an assessment about
the Singularity, it is not a definition of the concept.

As of today, the Wikipedia definition is :

> The technological singularity (also, simply, the singularity)[1] is the
> hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly
> trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to
> human civilization.

That sounds much more accurate imho. Most notably, the important point is that
the Singularity will bring unforeseeable changes. No-one knows if mankind will
be better or worse out of it.

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totalZero
Dr. Lloyd is a physicist more than anything (even though his department at MIT
is MechE), which may explain why he eschews the manufacturing approach to
Moore's Law. The author should have mentioned this; Dr. Lloyd is brilliant but
he isn't an EE or CS and can't reasonably be expected to base his theories on
those disciplines.

~~~
jessriedel
Since the topic is the limits to computation imposed by the fundamental laws
of physics, knowledge of the details of modern semiconductor manufacturing
seem much less relevant than of quantum mechanics and gravity.

------
hepek
Joe Armstrong gives a very good talk about ideas in the article in "The Mess
We're In" (2014):

[https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4?t=26m12s](https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4?t=26m12s)

