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rudinreader
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Up to Date on "The Second Coming"
Just reading some old (1990,2000) articles concerning prophesies or the future of computing and the internet, etc..
The Second Coming Manifesto:
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/info_and_tech/second_coming.htm
The Computer for the 21st Century:
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html
It's actually interesting to look at Weiser's home page, because the picture reads: "I have no idea what the future will be". I gather this was to admit being pretty wrong with his ideas.
My personal take is pretty much the opposite of both of these guys, but still I could be dead wrong. I personally am pretty annoyed (or nastalgic) at the early days of the IBM PC, up until Windows 3.1. In those days it was possible to understand how the entire operating system and hardware worked (if they would only give you enough time to study it without changing the technology in the next release!), and you could also understand (via C/C++ etc) exactly how the program you wrote would be executed.
Certainly there were lots of problems and inefficiencies back then. If your program crashed (especially in DOS), then you would have to restart your computer. Another big inefficiency was the lack of rapid application development. Unfortunately, when RAD came to be, we simultaneously lost the ability to know what the programs looked like at an assembly level, etc.
All in all, it's clear to me that the original computer actually had something in it that would be of interest to computer science. The modern computer only simulates computer science, in that there is no way in hell you can understand how the code is processed in the machine.
To make a long story short, I hope that technologies like this one will play a bigger role: http://www.grifo.com/SOFT/uk_bas52.htm. Or I would also be happy if linux would play a role in making interesting computer science more accessible to nonspecialists. I have "glanced" through the "Linux Device Drivers" book, and the fact that that is a starting point seems to me to be kind of a problem. The "embedded linux" seems to me to have more hope than the intel cpu linux. Ideally, in the future you would not have to be a specialist to study linux on cpu's easy enough to understand, etc..
Anyone know of other recent prophecies on the future of computing, or have any ideas of your own? Please post.
Just reading some old (1990,2000) articles concerning prophesies or the future of computing and the internet, etc..
The Second Coming Manifesto:
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/info_and_tech/second_coming.htm
The Computer for the 21st Century:
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html
It's actually interesting to look at Weiser's home page, because the picture reads: "I have no idea what the future will be". I gather this was to admit being pretty wrong with his ideas.
My personal take is pretty much the opposite of both of these guys, but still I could be dead wrong. I personally am pretty annoyed (or nastalgic) at the early days of the IBM PC, up until Windows 3.1. In those days it was possible to understand how the entire operating system and hardware worked (if they would only give you enough time to study it without changing the technology in the next release!), and you could also understand (via C/C++ etc) exactly how the program you wrote would be executed.
Certainly there were lots of problems and inefficiencies back then. If your program crashed (especially in DOS), then you would have to restart your computer. Another big inefficiency was the lack of rapid application development. Unfortunately, when RAD came to be, we simultaneously lost the ability to know what the programs looked like at an assembly level, etc.
All in all, it's clear to me that the original computer actually had something in it that would be of interest to computer science. The modern computer only simulates computer science, in that there is no way in hell you can understand how the code is processed in the machine.
To make a long story short, I hope that technologies like this one will play a bigger role: http://www.grifo.com/SOFT/uk_bas52.htm. Or I would also be happy if linux would play a role in making interesting computer science more accessible to nonspecialists. I have "glanced" through the "Linux Device Drivers" book, and the fact that that is a starting point seems to me to be kind of a problem. The "embedded linux" seems to me to have more hope than the intel cpu linux. Ideally, in the future you would not have to be a specialist to study linux on cpu's easy enough to understand, etc..
Anyone know of other recent prophecies on the future of computing, or have any ideas of your own? Please post.
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