"50 years is a long time"
In a published interview with the New York Times, Internet security guru Bruce Schneier gives a compelling response to this question:
Q: In 50 years, what do you believe will be the most incredible, fantastic, mind-blowing advance in computers/technology at that time?A: Fifty years is a long time. In 1957, fifty years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 computers total, and they were essentially used to crunch numbers. They were huge, expensive, and unreliable; sometimes, they caught on fire.
There was no word processing, no spreadsheets, no e-mail, and no Internet. Programs were written on punch cards or paper tape, and memory was measured in thousands of digits. IBM sold a disk drive that could hold almost 4.5 megabytes, but it was five-and-a-half feet tall by five feet deep and would just barely fit through a standard door. . .
Moore’s Law predicts that in fifty years, computers will be a billion times more powerful than they are today. I don’t think anyone has any idea of the fantastic emergent properties you get from a billion-times increase in computing power.
Yep. Not to mention the thoroughly transformative impacts of exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog
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