[1st-mile-nm] Exponential technological progress
Steve Ross
editorsteve at gmail.com
Mon Apr 14 11:02:08 PDT 2008
Just to be accurate, MIT had at least a few other computers,
including an IBM 1620 at the Sloan School, and a PDP1 in the
basement. I used both of them in the summer of 1963, a year
before I graduated high school. Ray is referring to the IBM
7090, the biggest machine in the place at the time.
All were (gasp!) transistorized.
Steven S. Ross
Editor-in-Chief
Broadband Properties
steve at broadbandproperties.com
www.bbpmag.com
SKYPE: editorsteve
+1 781-284-8810
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Carroll Cagle wrote:
> /By Ray Kurzweil/
>
> /Washington// Post/
>
> Sunday, April 13, 2008
>
> M IT was so advanced in 1965 (the year I entered as a freshman) that it
> actually had a computer. Housed in its own building, it cost $11 million
> (in today's dollars) and was shared by all students and faculty. Four
> decades later, the computer in your cellphone is a million times
> smaller, a million times less expensive and a thousand times more
> powerful. That's a billion-fold increase in the amount of computation
> you can buy per dollar.
>
> Yet as powerful as information technology is today, we will make another
> billion-fold increase in capability (for the same cost) over the next 25
> years. That's because information technology builds on itself -- we are
> continually using the latest tools to create the next so they grow in
> capability at an exponential rate. This doesn't just mean snazzier
> cellphones. It means that change will rock every aspect of our world.
> The exponential growth in computing speed will unlock a solution to
> global warming, unmask the secret to longer life and solve myriad other
> worldly conundrums.
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103326.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
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