Post-Moore’s Law - Is There a “New Technology Futures”?
Posted on January 1, 2007
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |
When George Orwell sat down to write his account of a dystopian future, 1984, he had in mind the combination of cynical, polarising politics of post-war Europe and the growing art of information technology. George Orwell managed to make the eavesdropping, surveillance-heavy future enabled by technology full of social, psychological and philosophical menace. In fact he interrogated the future in a more comprehensive way, in a relatively small number of pages, than has happened since, certainly in modern technology circles where every statement begins, and ends, with an exploration of little more than Moore’s Law.
What will drive the EU’s vision of a future where computing is everywhere? In our clothes, on door knobs, lamposts and street signs, as well as vanity mirrors, and keypads? Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law has become the lazy visionary’s crib pad. What will drive the evolution, rapid no doubt, of virtual online worlds like Second Life? Moore’s Law? Yes. Yes.
But all Moore’s Law really tells us is that computing power tends towards absolute capability. Orwell was right to recognise that people utilise technologies in weird ways, though the idea that a menacing big brother will take control of an all seeing surveillance technology is now far fetched. The FBI and Homeland Security has the database and Endemol has the TV series. But civil rights, while threatened, are in one piece, at least in developed western style economies.
A more important line of thinking developed during the 1990s which recognsied with Orwellian perspicacity that people were tending to participate in all kinds of fictions, chief among them TV series like Star Trek. Long before the inter-web and user generated content, social networking and You Tube people had begun taking Star Trek characters and developing new fictions from them.
The interest of that development is the potential it holds for people to also develop new forms of democractic participation. In other words if you can write lines for Spock you should be able to evolve ideas in parallel areas such as the who, what and why of Goverments.
Leaving Moore in his box then we have a social and political futurology based on participation, participation in self-forming and self governing communities, which are now becoming more visible because of social networking. What are the implications of that?
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2 Responses to “Post-Moore’s Law - Is There a “New Technology Futures”?”
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Morre’s law is almost dead — at least in terms of CPU’s speeds. Back in 1998 consumers were told that CPU’s speeds are increasing – and this was some how related to Morre’s law – now it’s not fashioned to bring this embrasing subject. Infact base on Intel predicted that they will be able to ship 10ghz of CPU by 2011.
Now, keep in mind that Chips giant was talking about single core CPU – mostly likely based on 32bit architecture. At the moment we don’t even have 5Ghz CPU – single core, duel core, or quad core. Interestingly enough since 2004 Intel has eliminated Ghz Measurements just like automobile marketers, Intel Corp. is assigning model numbers to their CPU. Of course AMD was doing this long before Intel. Now both companies about “CPU’s core”, CPU’s speeds which use to be a big thing, they ignroe it.
Reference:
Geek.com Geek News - Intel predicts 10GHz chips by 2011
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/q22000/chi2000726001967.htm
Intel Strips ‘Gigahertz’ From Computer Chip Names
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/04/0326/107313.html
Hi Dorothy - welcome to the site. Interesting - I don’t keep track of those news sources so I hadn’t realised. yet people still refer to Moore’s law as though it were current and true.