KI4MVP
formerly LJ4MVP
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2005
- Messages
- 31,228
- Reaction score
- 41,191
- Points
- 148
Named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. The idea/observation is that computer capacity grows exponentially. Basically every 18 months to 2 years computing capacity and performance doubles.
Ray Kurzweil and others believe that this doubling isn't limited to computers, that it also happens with information and other technologies (like solar).
The thing about exponential growth like this is that even as fast as it occurs, it's hard to see scale the changes in the short term. Which means it can be difficult to see what it means for the future.
So given how young many on this board are (from the birthday song thread) I thought I'd post a snapshot of what things were like 35-40 years ago compared to today. Looking at how much things have changed in the past 40 years can give some perspective of the next 40 years. One thing is for certain, the world will look vastly different even 20 years form now.
The first time I ever got to see or use a computer was for one day a little over 40 years ago. A friend's mom worked and NASA and took us with her to work one weekend because she had to do some work. To keep us busy, she set us up to use the computer there.
There was no display. Instead, you used something that looked like this:
There were no disk drives, instead programs were stored on rolls of paper like this:
she loaded a game for us to play. The game worked like this. The computer typed out a distance to a ship (that was going to attack us) and a wind speed. We typed 1 number, which was the angle to fire our cannon. The response was how close we came to hitting the ship, the new distance and wind speed. If you hit the ship before it got to you, you won, otherwise you lost. Either way you would start over and play again.
I thought it was the most amazing thing I ever saw.
I didn't get to use another computer for about 2 years. And then I never even saw the computer we used. The high school I went to didn't have a computer, a neighboring school system had one. What we had was a terminal (no graphics) and a modem. There was just one for the entire school. The modem transmitted about 11 characters a second (110 baud) and looked like this
you had to dial the number then put the headset in the modem. I got to use that from time to time for a couple of years. Then I had to transfer to schools. The new school system didn't have a computer or a terminal.
After my junior year I talked my parents into buying me an Apple ][ plus computer.
I even managed to get it loaded with a full 48k of memory, the maximum they sold then. What I didn't' get was a disk drive or a monitor. You hooked it up to a TV with an adapter and could use a cassette player to load and save programs.
That's when I first learned how to program. I spent weeks writing a game, when I had it working, I tested it out on my family. Around then our cassette player broke. We exchanged it, the new one would never load my program back in.
In total it took 5-6 years from the first time I ever saw a computer until I had one that I could actually learn to program on. It was another 3 years before any of my friends had computers. When I started college, my computer science professors didn't have their own computer. I had two different classes where we had to program on key punch cards. The programs and the data were typed on a stack of cards like this (that you never ever wanted to drop)
You put them in a bin, waited for the people you couldn't see took them and fed them into a computer that another university had, the results printed out and were put back in a bin.
When I got my first programming job, the company hired another computer programmer who had just finished his degree in computer science. It turned out he had never actually written a program because his college didn't have a computer. It unsurprisingly also turned out he had no idea how to program.
Ray Kurzweil and others believe that this doubling isn't limited to computers, that it also happens with information and other technologies (like solar).
The thing about exponential growth like this is that even as fast as it occurs, it's hard to see scale the changes in the short term. Which means it can be difficult to see what it means for the future.
So given how young many on this board are (from the birthday song thread) I thought I'd post a snapshot of what things were like 35-40 years ago compared to today. Looking at how much things have changed in the past 40 years can give some perspective of the next 40 years. One thing is for certain, the world will look vastly different even 20 years form now.
The first time I ever got to see or use a computer was for one day a little over 40 years ago. A friend's mom worked and NASA and took us with her to work one weekend because she had to do some work. To keep us busy, she set us up to use the computer there.
There was no display. Instead, you used something that looked like this:
There were no disk drives, instead programs were stored on rolls of paper like this:
she loaded a game for us to play. The game worked like this. The computer typed out a distance to a ship (that was going to attack us) and a wind speed. We typed 1 number, which was the angle to fire our cannon. The response was how close we came to hitting the ship, the new distance and wind speed. If you hit the ship before it got to you, you won, otherwise you lost. Either way you would start over and play again.
I thought it was the most amazing thing I ever saw.
I didn't get to use another computer for about 2 years. And then I never even saw the computer we used. The high school I went to didn't have a computer, a neighboring school system had one. What we had was a terminal (no graphics) and a modem. There was just one for the entire school. The modem transmitted about 11 characters a second (110 baud) and looked like this
you had to dial the number then put the headset in the modem. I got to use that from time to time for a couple of years. Then I had to transfer to schools. The new school system didn't have a computer or a terminal.
After my junior year I talked my parents into buying me an Apple ][ plus computer.
I even managed to get it loaded with a full 48k of memory, the maximum they sold then. What I didn't' get was a disk drive or a monitor. You hooked it up to a TV with an adapter and could use a cassette player to load and save programs.
That's when I first learned how to program. I spent weeks writing a game, when I had it working, I tested it out on my family. Around then our cassette player broke. We exchanged it, the new one would never load my program back in.
In total it took 5-6 years from the first time I ever saw a computer until I had one that I could actually learn to program on. It was another 3 years before any of my friends had computers. When I started college, my computer science professors didn't have their own computer. I had two different classes where we had to program on key punch cards. The programs and the data were typed on a stack of cards like this (that you never ever wanted to drop)
You put them in a bin, waited for the people you couldn't see took them and fed them into a computer that another university had, the results printed out and were put back in a bin.
When I got my first programming job, the company hired another computer programmer who had just finished his degree in computer science. It turned out he had never actually written a program because his college didn't have a computer. It unsurprisingly also turned out he had no idea how to program.