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When I was a kid, I used to enjoy watching TV programs about the future.
Stuff like Tomorrow's World and Beyond 2000. Basically programs where
they show you crazy new inventions. Some of them seemed fantastic, some
of them seemed utterly stupid. There aren't that many that I still remember.
I do recall some guy demonstrating a kind of green putty that "sweats"
when you heat it. He took a handful of this stuff, rubbed his hands in
it, picked up a thin bit of copper pipe, and proceeded to blowtorch it.
completely unharmed due to the unbelievable thermal dissipation
properties of the putty.
I especially liked the car security system which involves electrifying
the car seat to several thousand volts. They demonstrated the sparks it
generates, but nobody actually said anything about what it does to a
human being. I'm guessing this isn't legal. ;-)
There was a suggestion that one day, your entire house would be
controlled by a computer. Stuff like, you could put some food in an oven
that doubles as a refrigerator, and when you leave work, you dial a
special phone number which tells the oven to stop refrigerating and
start cooking, and when you get home, your meal is done.
Yeah, well, /that/ never happened. :-P Today of course, it wouldn't be a
telephone number. It would be some kind of Internet operation. But there
are a number of security, safety and reliability questions to consider.
Do you want random strangers to be able to control your oven, or open
all your windows? Probably not. What happens when the system stops
working? On top of that, given that they've yet to come up with a way
for the component parts of your stereo system to communicate with each
other unless they're all from the same manufacturer, the chances of your
entire *house* cooperating are pretty non-existent. ;-)
Another week, they had a plastic key with a microprocessor inside it.
When you stick it in the lock, it transmits a code to the computer in
the lock, which makes the door unlock. [Actually, it didn't. The key
snapped off in the lock, leaving the presenter to tell us all how
wonderful it is, and how this is only a prototype.] It seemed pretty
stupid to me, but today electronic locks are all over the place. They
just don't make them shaped like mechanical keys any more - because
that's silly.
Unfortunately, towards the end of the show, every invention they
featured was "hey, somebody took [random household object] and put a
small computer inside it, allowing it to do [list of largely useless
functions]". I guess that's why they eventually cancelled it; they just
couldn't find genuinely interesting inventions any more.
I do remember them demonstrating the Sony MiniDisk, which *did*
eventually become a commercial product. It was supposed to kill the old
magnetic cassettes. At the time, recordable CDs hadn't been invented. So
while you could *buy* pressed CDs, if you wanted to *record* anything,
the _only_ available option was cassette. The presenter explained how
loud sounds mask out quiet sounds, and MiniDisk uses this effect to
squeeze more data than would usually be possible onto such a small carrier.
(Today of course we know that MiniDisk belongs with Zip and Jazz in the
category of "kind of successful, but not very". Zip disks were supposed
to kill the 3.5" floppy. LS-120 was supposed to kill it. Jazz was
supposed to kill it. CD-R nearly killed it. But in the end, flash drives
are what actually finished the humble floppy. Similarly, cassette was
killed not so much by MiniDisk but by a combination of CD-R and
ubiquitous MP3 players, not to mention the Internet.)
I remember seeing the first automatic speed cameras, and thinking this
was a neat idea. Oh how wrong I was... ;-)
I also remember something rather puzzling. Apparently somebody
discovered that if you etch silicon with a certain kind of acid, it
produces a special microscopic structure which has an unexpected
property: it can transform electricity into like, and the reverse. This
was hailed as the future of IC technology. In the future, we were told,
interconnects on an IC would work using light rather electricity. For
light has one really critical advantage: beams of light can pass through
each other.
By contrast, if you want to move signals around using wires, you either
have to have extremely long and convoluted wire routes to get around all
the obstacles in your way, or complex multiple-layer wiring designs. But
with light, a signal can just go straight from A to B, intersecting as
many other signal paths as you like.
So if this technology is the future... where is it? How come it's
completely vanished off the face of existence?
There seemed to be some suggesting that the entire IC might work by
processing light instead of electricity. I'm sceptical about whether
that could work. I'm not aware of any light-based switching technology.
On the other hand, just using light for implementing long-range
connections? That could *totally* work! By strategically using optical
signals in place of electronic ones, you might be able to drastically
reduce signal path lengths, which reduces propagation delays. More to
the point, if I'm understanding this right, long traces have the problem
of high capacitance too, which an optical signal path would seemingly
also avoid.
So why is absolutely nobody using this stuff? I can only imagine that
the answer is the same as for the 3D IC. In other words, "it's too
expensive" combined with "we haven't reached the hard limits of current
methods yet".
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Le 12/04/2011 16:15, Invisible a écrit :
> So why is absolutely nobody using this stuff?
On the right hand, you have a working technology and only a small
investement to make it a bit better (as smaller, quicker, ... ), and
more important: a lot of people have knowledges about that technology,
so it is easy to find workers.
On the left hand, you have only an idea, without even a proof that it
can beat the existing one. Moreover, the entering price of the new
technology is many many time the cost... without warranty about the
final product being better & cheaper.
Only fools would go for the left hand. Managers go with the right hand.
It's a no fault path, and managers can escape before the dead end.
Fools are what inventors are made of. And patent system overused by big
companies just killed that path: If you are an isolated successful
inventor, you will get ruined by the lawsuits by shark-lawers for
possible patent violation.
You only get a bag-free vacuum cleaner through the system so far...
About minidisc by sony, it was nice but started to suck at DRM already.
(integrated copy protection: 1 generation numeric copy only, no way to
transfert from disk to PC in numeric). Same for DAT tape...
About the green putty... can you prove to the FDA it is not toxic ? What
if swallowed by a child ? (law suit's risk vs interest... )
what if I burned myself because it was exhausted ? (or get exhausted...)
Magic-actor (wizard/showman) have their own tricks, but it is not for
the people.
The lawers killed your future.
--
Software is like dirt - it costs time and money to change it and move it
around.
Just because you can't see it, it doesn't weigh anything,
and you can't drill a hole in it and stick a rivet into it doesn't mean
it's free.
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> Only fools would go for the left hand. Managers go with the right hand.
> It's a no fault path, and managers can escape before the dead end.
> Fools are what inventors are made of.
By that reckoning, nothing new would ever be invented. I'm sure if some
big company could figure out how to make chips with 10x the performance
of all their competitors, they would be Seriously Interested in this idea.
> About minidisc by sony, it was nice but started to suck at DRM already.
> (integrated copy protection: 1 generation numeric copy only, no way to
> transfert from disk to PC in numeric). Same for DAT tape...
It's news to me that DAT was ever intended as anything other than a
studio format.
> About the green putty... can you prove to the FDA it is not toxic ? What
> if swallowed by a child ? (law suit's risk vs interest... )
> what if I burned myself because it was exhausted ? (or get exhausted...)
It was always intended for industrial applications. As far as I know,
they might even be using it.
> The lawers killed your future.
Damnit! >_<
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On 4/12/2011 7:15, Invisible wrote:
> So if this technology is the future... where is it? How come it's completely
> vanished off the face of existence?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing
> There seemed to be some suggesting that the entire IC might work by
> processing light instead of electricity. I'm sceptical about whether that
> could work. I'm not aware of any light-based switching technology.
The very effect that makes you not need wires means the entire IC can't work
with nothing but light. You don't need wires because photons don't interact
with each other - they only interact with electrons. Hence, you can't easily
switch light without involving electricity.
> On the other hand, just using light for implementing long-range connections?
> That could *totally* work!
You mean, like, microwave communication towers and fiber optic cable? Yeah,
that would be cool if someone were using that, wouldn't it? It might even
eventually trickle down to consumers - maybe they'll put that in USB 3.0 or
something.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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In 1967 the Philco-Ford Company produced a documentary about what life
will be like in 1999 (named "1999 A.D.") While the details were obviously
way off, the gist of some of the predictions was surprisingly accurate.
For example in this clip you see them predicting online shopping, online
banking and flatscreen monitors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpq5ZmANp0k
(IIRC online shopping was still not a very big thing in 1999, but it
certainly existed, and isn't too far away from the current situation,
where online shopping is quite established.)
--
- Warp
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On 12/04/2011 3:48 PM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> About minidisc by sony, it was nice but started to suck at DRM already.
> (integrated copy protection: 1 generation numeric copy only, no way to
> transfert from disk to PC in numeric). Same for DAT tape...
FYI My Tascam DAT recorder has an "Engineering" mode that ignores DRM.
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 12/04/2011 5:52 PM, Warp wrote:
> and flatscreen monitors:
I remember reading an article in the late 50's or early 60's saying that
flatscreen monitors would be impossible. Of course it was talking about CRTs
--
Regards
Stephen
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On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:15:04 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> Another week, they had a plastic key with a microprocessor inside it.
> When you stick it in the lock, it transmits a code to the computer in
> the lock, which makes the door unlock. [Actually, it didn't. The key
> snapped off in the lock, leaving the presenter to tell us all how
> wonderful it is, and how this is only a prototype.] It seemed pretty
> stupid to me, but today electronic locks are all over the place. They
> just don't make them shaped like mechanical keys any more - because
> that's silly.
Actually, many modern cars in the US use microchipped mechanical keys -
makes them much more difficult to duplicate (also makes them a lot more
expensive).
On our recent holiday, though, we rented a Prius and it didn't have a
mechanical key at all.
So both models are in use.
> So if this technology is the future... where is it? How come it's
> completely vanished off the face of existence?
It hasn't - some of it didn't work out. Novell had a product technology
called NEST (Novell Embedded Systems Technology) about 10-15 years ago
that aimed to network common appliances - I saw things like VCRs that
were network-enabled, even a coffee maker. That VCR technology is a
predecessor to current DVR technology (many DVRs can be programmed over
the network).
Others of it are in use, but maybe in different applications than were
presented. That's the challenge of predicting the future - you have to
analyse trends and make predictions based on what the current trends show
you.
It's not a very exact science, because it relies very heavily on
guesswork, and the further out you try to predict, the more inaccurate
the predictions become - partly because the trending only takes you so
far, and partly because you can't predict based on upcoming breakthroughs
(you don't know when there will be a breakthrough in nanotechnology for
example, though you might be able to predict that a breakthrough is
likely to happen) - especially breakthroughs that are completely
unexpected.
> There seemed to be some suggesting that the entire IC might work by
> processing light instead of electricity. I'm sceptical about whether
> that could work. I'm not aware of any light-based switching technology.
Of course scepticism would be present in any area where one didn't have
expertise. I've heard of some of this type of thing being done
experimentally in academic settings. Quantum computing, OTOH, I'm not
sure anyone could have predicted because the behaviours of quantum
particles (and the discovery of certain particles) couldn't easily have
been predicted (but I'm no expert and it's possible/probable that someone
who is could've seen it coming from further off).
> So why is absolutely nobody using this stuff? I can only imagine that
> the answer is the same as for the 3D IC. In other words, "it's too
> expensive" combined with "we haven't reached the hard limits of current
> methods yet".
There is a certain amount of technological inertia to overcome - current
methods are cheap, developing new methods costs a lot of money,
especially when you start talking about large-scale production.
So in essence, you're correct. :)
Jim
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On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:15:49 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>> About minidisc by sony, it was nice but started to suck at DRM already.
>> (integrated copy protection: 1 generation numeric copy only, no way to
>> transfert from disk to PC in numeric). Same for DAT tape...
>
> It's news to me that DAT was ever intended as anything other than a
> studio format.
That's why it sucks so hard as a backup medium - it was only intended to
be used for lossy data (ie, audio), and was adapted for use for backup
medium.
Jim
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Stephen <mcavoys_at@aoldotcom> wrote:
> On 12/04/2011 5:52 PM, Warp wrote:
> > and flatscreen monitors:
> I remember reading an article in the late 50's or early 60's saying that
> flatscreen monitors would be impossible. Of course it was talking about CRTs
Ironically, there exists a technology to make flatscreen CRTs, with all
the advantages of CRT (such as contrast) with less of the disadvantages
(such as distortion, misalignment, etc). The basic idea is that there's
one (static) electron ray per pixel. (Well, three, one for each color
component.)
For some reason the technology has never been commercialized, even though
it could potentially be feasible.
--
- Warp
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