The need for speed
An article from the 27 November US edition of Information Week gushes enthusiastically about the growth of computer memory and bandwidth. It praised Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, for his mid-60s prediction that the number of transistors that can be crammed onto a square inch of silicon would double every 18 months and the price would be slashed in half.
But the article also states that at some point the explosion of memory, bandwidth and general computing power will eventually "hit a wall". Still, it's unclear whether that dire-sounding collision will be important.
"There is a real fear that eventually we will reach some quantum limit -- the point at which the smallest light waves are still too large to be used to etch ever-smaller circuit lines," wrote the author, Stuart J Johnston. "It will probably be 15 years before we reach that point.
"Researchers in labs around the world have started constructing experimental logic gates, the basic building blocks of processors, using electrons in individual atoms to do the computing -- the beginnings of what's called quantum computing... So by the time we reach the physical limits of using light to etch chips, current semiconductors may be well on their way to obsolescence."
The same article, titled We Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, also predicts that microprocessors will become so small and inexpensive that they'll be sewn into our clothes, perhaps put into food packaging, and probably even implanted into our brains.
"Quantum physics may yield encryption technologies that could make messages virtually unbreakable," Johnston wrote. "Advances in display technologies may soon yield paints that you brush onto the wall to turn it into an instant electronic whiteboard."
To be sure, many of these predictions will fall flat. But that's ok. Technology enthusiasts are used to breathless seers whose words quickly turn to bunk or become pop culture lore, such as these predictions:
- "I predict the Internet... will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse," Bob Metcalfe, inventor and 3Com founder, said in 1995
- "640K ought to be enough for anybody," Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, said in 1981
- "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment, said in 1977
- "Where... the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons," Popular Mechanics said in 1949
- "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers," Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said in 1943.
