Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Hmmmm....what next?

I have a new smartphone that came with a new service (our old service didn't' work at the new house). This smartphone has over 23,000 time more RAM then my first computer which I got for Christmas about 27 years ago. The clock speed on the CPU is a deceptively but 333 times faster. The smartphone has over 25,000 times as much built in storage capacity. My personal computer kicks the smartphone's ass. What the heck will my personal computer look like 27 years from now?

2 petahertz processor? 2 exabytes of RAM and a couple dozen zetabytes of Storage? Will it even be visible?

It's an amazing time we live in, I can imagine tools of incredible power and my predictions are in all likelihood very conservative. I don't suspect any of my Bronze Age ancestors sat around the fire imagining a spear 20,000 times more powerful or a clay tablet able to record a billion times more information.

As our tools change, we change. I heard the shooting started in the first gulf war from a friend online in Sweden I was playing chess with; it was the stuff of science fiction just years earlier now so common it's become a normal part of life.

Twenty years from now people will still be playing chess. Will they be playing D&D?

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