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pdwyer wrote:I'm not so certain that mankind will colonise other planets any time soon

I'm 41 and the world has NOT changed in any dramatic way since I was 5 years old. We still drive cars with fuel, do the weekly shopping, watch TV, use computers, get fat, go to work, come home, sleep. What's changed? NOTHING. No "living in space", or living on Mars, or flying cars, or clothes that wash themselves; or any of a million things promised to me back in 1975. How I looked forward to it! And over 3 decades later: what a massive let-down. We're still living the same way.

The world is totally the same today as it was back then. Sure, little inventions crop up every now and then (such as the iPhone) but they don't CHANGE the world, no matter how much they're hyped. For something to "change" the world, it must be used by EVERYONE and everyone must be RELIANT on it to live day to day. Smartphones don't do that, or else every single living human would have one and be using it to survive. They're nothing but a convenient tool, but not an essential tool. People can do business without them, and many do.

utopiomania wrote:The PC is almost dead, people use apps on their phones, and the silver screen will
be the next additional target paltform.

Sure, I can just imagine people using little cell phones in the office to do their daily work, instead of PCs.

And CINEMAS are the next target platform? What are you smoking?

Why does 'PC' mean a standalone desktop tethered to some desk?
C'MON already
The SmartPhone IS a PC and it is revolutionizing the planet.
Understand the power of a computer in an infinite amount of hands and minds and you will begin to realize that many many problems will start to be solved through unique and previously untapped resources...EVERYONE.
The pace of discovery is now discarding its porsche and buckling into a rocket ship!
What a ride to come

skywalk wrote:Why does 'PC' mean a standalone desktop tethered to some desk?

Because that's its definition when it was designed: Personal Computer. Not PSM (Personal Smart Phone).

skywalk wrote:The pace of discovery is now discarding its porsche and buckling into a rocket ship!
What a ride to come

Hehehe, that's what I heard back in 1975, and kept hearing throughout the 80s and 90s. I seriously doubt anything will change in the next 30 years. As they say, the best predictor of the future is the past, and the past 30 years have done squat.

Please tell me how the smartphone is revolutionizing the planet, in such a way that what it does can't be done via any other traditional method.

MachineCode wrote: The world is totally the same today as it was back then. Sure, little inventions crop up every now and then (such as the iPhone) but they don't CHANGE the world, no matter how much they're hyped. For something to "change" the world, it must be used by EVERYONE and everyone must be RELIANT on it to live day to day.

Well, you're only a year older than me then

I see change though. I see a global spanning network and addressing system that runs on undersea cables and satillites. I can (and do) make a call with Video to the other side of the planet from my PC at the cost of the electricity it takes to run it (ISDN video phone in the mid 90's was a corporate luxury). The data travels in all sorts of ways to get to its destination via encapsulation technologies that reroute it when an earthquake causes a cable to break. I know how it was built and grew because I worked at AT&T during the beginning of the dot com boom. I can run skype from my phone now and no one is really impressed anymore.

Isolated people can tap vast information resources now and it's changing the way classes in schools are tought. People share and update knowledge in wikipedia like creating a pool of all human knowledge free to access and trying to stay free of government influence

Sure, there are no free thinking robots, or daily shuttles to the moon but we learned exactly why real AI is REALLY difficult and why propulsion systems to escape earths gravity is a much more significant challenges that we thought.

Instead of a TV game called "tennis" consisting of two rectangle bats and a square ball in b/w, it's 64 people sitting in different countries battling it out real time with near photo quality graphics, planes that follow real physics engines and bullets that lose altidute slightly due to gravity.

They can make the basics of eye implants that see and feed limited blocky light to the brain, and progress has been made on bionic limbs that move from your thoughts via your nerves

Life expectancy due to medicine has risen a lot since I was born, this is not an easy thing to achieve.

When a 9.0 quake hit Japan, not a single tall building in sendai fell over

Hopefully humans will overcome the energy crisis that hits in the later part of our lifetimes or the infrastructure will fail and you'll have a chance to see if you feel any different when the complexity created of 150 years of cheap fossil fuels goes away. I suspect you will miss it.

We live like kings today, enjoy fruit and fish that's in season on the other side of the planet and take it for granted

MachineCode wrote:

skywalk wrote:Why does 'PC' mean a standalone desktop tethered to some desk?

Because that's its definition when it was designed: Personal Computer. Not PSM (Personal Smart Phone).

skywalk wrote:The pace of discovery is now discarding its porsche and buckling into a rocket ship!
What a ride to come

Hehehe, that's what I heard back in 1975, and kept hearing throughout the 80s and 90s. I seriously doubt anything will change in the next 30 years. As they say, the best predictor of the future is the past, and the past 30 years have done squat.

Please tell me how the smartphone is revolutionizing the planet, in such a way that what it does can't be done via any other traditional method.

Seriously?
The computing power and access to information that exist in today's smart phones means classrooms are in session in billions of pockets. It doesn't get any more "personal" than that
These off topic discussions can be quite baiting as I get the sense you are being a bit argumentative. So I prefer to applaud your skill at eliciting a response from me rather than suspecting you truly believe what you say.

A smart phone has the power of a desktop PC. However for what do you realy use it? Surfing the internet, showing photos, chatting. Any real work on them is a pain as they are just to small and touch interfaces actualy hurt my fingers after some time. Smart phones are no replacement for a desktop PC and the PC isnt dead. Calling the PC as dead or allmost dead has happend often befor and it was never true because the PC can do anything any other device can do. But there is no single device that can do all the things a desktop PC can. There are people that just dont need a PC any longer, because they just use it for internet surfing or gaming but that does not mean it's dead.

About "the cloud" (i am the only one that thinks that name is kind of dumb? ) :
Cloud computing works for some tasks but it's just overhyped and overused at the moment and i predict it will actualy drop down in the future to a more reasonable level. They use it for just about anything and then wondering about poor performance, insecure data and bad connectivity.

skywalk wrote:I get the sense you are being a bit argumentative

Whatever. I was going to post different angles to what you and pdwyer posted (for instance, a computer game with 64 players worldwide is still just a computer game, with people sitting in front of monitors like 30 years ago); but your quote above just convinces me that I'll probably just be labeled a troll. So I won't continue. It's a shame that you're not receptive to opposing points of view, and would rather label someone "argumentative" just because they have a mind of their own.

Thorium wrote:Any real work on [smart phones] is a pain as they are just to small and touch interfaces actualy hurt my fingers after some time.

That's exactly right. There's a reason the Psion series of palmtop computers died: they were great, and did almost everything that a desktop PC did; but they were POINTLESS because of their size. Same story for the Pocket PC. Then netbooks came along (like the Eee PC) and everyone thought they'd be great due to their little size... until Asus realised the keyboard and monitor needed to be bigger, and so made bigger versions. However, these are now basically the same size as normal laptops, so they failed too.

Thus, a computer with a full-size keyboard, monitor and mouse is the only way to seriously get tasks done, be it at home or work. Smart phones will NEVER take over, as proven by Psion, Pocket PCs and Eee PC above. History has spoken, and you'll just have to deal with it.

MachineCode wrote:It's a shame that you're not receptive to opposing points of view, and would rather label someone "argumentative" just because they have a mind of their own.

Ummm, I am indeed receptive. It's just the line of reasoning you've taken is lost on me when applied in a macro big picture view or in a micro narrowed focus of technology. I apologize if that is not what you want to hear.
So, as an exercise if I stop and try to make your argument...which is what...?
Innovation is happening too slowly? I want my cell phone obsoleted every 6 months.
Technology promised the moon, but all we got was some space junk and Tang?
Big Medicine has been fighting cancer for over 30 years, but cancer still kills people?

Kidding aside...we are seeing crude baby steps in voice recognition and prosthetic extensions and even brain wave interpreters! When I can think and speak and gesture at full speed and have a computer instantly respond, then that will be a game changer. So, yes, in some regards we are teased by these emerging technologies much as the papacy was waiting for Michelangelo to finish painting the ceiling! But, I say, why wait or complain? Jump in and grab a brush or keyboard or test tube and help shorten the time.

Hi skywalk... I just come back from a 2-hour swim and reading my post about arguing looks silly now. I guess the exercise endorphins have kicked in and I'm feeling more positive. I still think things are moving slowly or not at all, but that's no reason for me to argue with you and call you non-receptive. So, I apologise for that.

A docked SmartPhone IS a PC. Albeit a low powered one.
But c'mon already? Do you remember your 1st PC?
I don't, but it had way less RAM, HD, processor cycles, etc. than my 4.5" SmartPhone.

In reality, today's smartphones when docked, are all that many corporate employees need to complete order entry, auditing, receptionist duties, email, documentation, presentations and on and on.
And they're only going to get faster.
It's like when the 1st laptops came out and were so under powered I could watch the sun set while my code ran.
But many still gobbled them up because they freed the user from his desktop.
I think I finally caved and got a laptop when they packed a Pentium 90MHz and 32MB RAM.
I'm thinking it's another 3 years before I can do the same with my Smartphone.

What is the future ?

If we talk about computers,
I'm 52 now,

My first electronic computer (back in 1974, I was 15) was a PCB with:
4 switches for data
1 switch for upper data and lower data selection (to make 8 bits)
1 switch for address counter + 1
1 enter switch
and 1 reset switch.
When you made a mistake somewhere in the code,
(it was first manually converting data to asm codes)
you must start over again.
1Kb of RAM 8 bits data.
and 0.1 Mhz (100 KHz) of electronic speed.
No HD, only cassette tape to send data to it.
No monitor, only 4 seven segment displays.


In between there was the 'JUNIOR' Computer of elector.
a 6502 cpu based SBC and 6 seven segment display s,
a small keyboard and a 6522 I/O ic.
So we had some action then,
we lighted a LED on/off. waw i was looking for hours to it.
and than 4 led loop lights.


Years later, there was my first APPLE II,
- 4Kb RAM
- no HD
- floppy (single sided, and then there was the HD double sided)
- a very low resolution monochrome monitor
- All this was very expensive (like a second external floppy drive)
- and a very expensive mouse.

- and one day the supper memory of 16Kb RAM.
- if we started the computer, it was instant action (basic time action).
- it was all stored in ROM.


- Some time later, my first EPSON dotmatrix printer, 40 characters/line
and software to print characterized photos.


- Than the big change, APPLE Macintosh computer, with modem (300 baudrate)


IT WAS FUN IN THAT TIME...
- we had have games, spreadsheets, text editors, all of it we have today...


Today, my PC have it all,
Still keyboard, monitor, RAM, BIOS ROM, mouse, HD ...
but 80% of the cpu time and my memory (and electricity it uses) is used for anti spam/virus/spyware/firewalls ...
and for windows storing not needed stuff like history's, I do not need.

AND IT IS NO FUN ANY MORE ...

Marc,

PS: @pdwyer
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 87#p375087
I agree with you here.

marc_256 wrote:AND IT IS NO FUN ANY MORE ...

I remember thinking this when IT started maturing and real corporate money started landing in IT departments as email started to become more critical for businesses to run. This level of formalising of process etc led us to ITIL. Being certified in ITIL sadly is probably worth more on my resume than any other single IT certification I can think of (except maybe CCIE - which I don't have ).

Recently I exited the finance industry though and it's more fun now, technical skills and experience are worth something once again The new company wants all the heavy processes that finance companies have but for now, all is good again (just at a lower salary )

Guys, THIS is the future!

http://www.omfg.to/watch/6322-spieleent ... -echtzeit/

Sorry, those stupid "link collector" sites never add the source of the video...

Derren wrote:Guys, THIS is the future!

http://www.omfg.to/watch/6322-spieleent ... -echtzeit/

Sorry, those stupid "link collector" sites never add the source of the video...

Thanks Derren, looks like it's a demo from a guy named Bret Victor.

- Homepage
- Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle (1h video)
- Braid (a game by Bret Victor?)
- ClojureScript game editor - After seeing Bret Victor's talk, Inventing on Principle