'We're on a virtual walk out of Africa', futurologist tells Intel partners The human race is on the threshold of a virtual walk out of Africa, but we'll only be able to see where we're going as long as we're wearing those funny little glasses everyone wore to watch Avatar. In the meantime, according to Intel, corporate neanderthals still struggling along with outdated processors can help the human …
Guess he hasn't heard of this:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10401585-1.html
or this:
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/18/asus-launches-nvidia-3d-vision-laptop-156-120hz-lcd2c-3d-goggles.aspx
or these:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/18/hp-and-dell-working-on-3d-gaming-laptops/
but maybe he's thinking this could take that long to reach laptops (if it launches (has launched) as soon as the article predicts, I don't think it would be long before someone would jam it in a laptop):
http://hd.engadget.com/2009/05/07/glasses-free-3d-lcds-on-the-way-from-nec/
I'm speechless, I had no idea intel had found how conscience work, or by the same account, what conscience is, and the means to digitally reproduce it.
So the next marketing crap-word to replace "innovation" is "built-in conscience".
As per addressing the rights of processors, I'm sure intel will find a way so those rights won't affect their quarterly results... I can't stop imagining processors asking for retirement pay, paid holidays... or the right to relax playing "prom" from time to time.
So much for the IQ of an audience who think of technology as some kind of magic.
...working on something awesomely cool that isn't saddled by an instruction set from the '70s, a mish-mass of instructions and technologies, and a quirky hybrid of multiple execution units...
...sounds more like discovering fire than lamely jumping on the 3D bandwagon. We don't need 3D on a laptop. Really we don't. Perhaps for watching movies (in which case a Really Big telly would be more suited) or perhaps for children that would feel intimidated by Windows - though I had the "pleasure" of sitting in the library next to a five year old still in nappies (five? isn't that a bit old?) who knew her way around Google and Wiki AND print previewing and editing the output so she only got what she wanted. [ps: ubuntu and she knew it]
Damn, I was impressed.
Which is more than I can say for the 3D-on-a-laptop idea. Great, yet MORE reasons why management can't get anything done on time.
but still, how can 3D, massively parallel processors and terabytes of storage equal human intelligence ?
That's a bit like saying I've got a cow, a field of wheat and another of tomatoes, great I can make a hamburger. Ultimately, I could, but there are, erm, a few intermediate steps.
Right now, as far as artificial consciousness or intelligence is concerned, we are at the cow stage. We know where we want to go, but nobody has any idea of how to get to the hamburger yet.
And until we understand exactly how the human brain functions, you can throw as many miniaturized transistors on whatever technology you want, we won't know how to put it all together to make it work.
And that is just the hardware side of things....
Given their assessment that intelligent behavior is going to needing something more around a peta flop of processing we're still a some way off putting that in a *rack* never mind a laptop.
But it is true futurologists *are* smarter than average reg readers.
They get paid to spout what we only talk about over a few beers.
Yet more hype to sell us chips that we dont really need. Most CPU's from 2/3 years ago are more than fast enough NOW for what they are used for - even with modern day bloatware.
Like someone else said, we need new instruction sets and more work to be done on the motherboard/harddrive side of things to see any major increase in power.
"But Hammond's bold predictions bring us back to the beginning. It's all very well Intel declaring that now is a good time to upgrade your PC and switch the Vista."
I asked my laptop whether it wanted to be 'upgraded' to Vista, to which it quacked loudly and waddled off in the opposite direction as quickly as it could, looking for fish. (see icon for another hint why)
Seriously, 3D on a laptop - desktop replacement maybe, but generally? I think not - just think of the hit on battery life that this'll generate. But then again, I'm not exactly convinced of the utility of domestic 3D outside of the cinema, and possibly first-person-shooter games.
Ray Hammond wrote the absolutely brilliant book "The Musician and the Micro" in the early '80s. A lot of his predictions in there were pretty much spot-on.
http://www.rayhammond.com/musicianandthemicro.html
It'd be a shame if he's tried to keep up a winning streak of future gazing. I think you only get lucky once in that game. Ultimately, as Michael Crichton asks, "Why Speculate ?".
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-whyspeculate.html
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