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Thoughts about Trends 1
Chapter 5:How to Think about Trends
R. W. Hamming
(from Beyond Calculation)
Thoughts about Trends 2
How to Think about Trends• The Internal State of the Field:
Main Problems and Tools to Attack;
Workers avoid a Search for Radically New Approaches.
• Technical Support from Other Fields:
Fast and Small Components of Computers;
Price Estimation;
Restraints by the Supporting Technologies.
• Surrounding Society Support:
People Selection to study Computer Sciences;
Restricted Social and Political Rules.
Thoughts about Trends 3
Rules for Predicting the Future
• Short-Term Estimates are Optimistic• Long-Term Predictions are Pessimistic• What can happen Science• What will happen Engineering & Economics• What should happen Morals, Ethics, accepted
or rejected by society.
Thoughts about Trends 4
Hardware, Software, and Applications
• Chips production General-Purpose Computing;
• Turing Machine/ Von Neumann Model & Algorithms;
• Chips with Cache Memory and Pipelines built into them;
• Parallel Computing;
• Object Oriented Machines;
• Functional Programming by Machines:
Simulation of Index Registers (B-boxes);
Floating Point Arithmetic, Vector Processing, C++.
Thoughts about Trends 5
Hardware, Software, and Applications (continued)
• Widely Used Languages & Libraries;
• Built-in Languages (LISP, FORTRAN, APL, etc.);
• “From Software To Hardware” Approach;
• Improvement in Programming: after 50 years by a factor of 10;
• Speedup of the Computers: after 50 years by a factor of 106;
• The Speedup is less for Large Programs;
• Neural Network Simulation (Artificial Intelligence);
• Automatic Programming and Teaching;
• Automatic Translator; Speech Recognition and Generation;
• Understanding the meaning of the Sentence.
Thoughts about Trends 6
Support from Other Fields
• Most Great Advances in a Field come from OUTSIDE:
Transistor was invented by the Telephone Company to improve their service;
Telephone came from a teacher of the deaf;
Carbon Dating in Archeology came from Physicists, etc.
• Information Truth or Falsity:
Unorganized and not carefully selected information.
• Problem of Choice;
• Commercialization of TV, radio, Internet (?).
Thoughts about Trends 7
Society
• The Matter of Privacy as a Technical and Social Problem;
• Cryptography;
• Economics:
Restrictions on the number of people entering the field;
Support for Expensive Projects;
Network Communications (unsatisfactory response);
Intellectual Property Ownership, Patent System;
High Quality Information.
• Tribal Behavior and Individuality/ Isolation.
• Growth of Knowledge; “Information Hiding”, Integrated Chips
Thoughts about Trends 8
Human and Society Restrictions
• Results of Eons of Evolution;
• Innate Drives;
• Limited Bandwidth of Input and Output;
• Modest Rate of Internally Processing Bits of Information;
• Fixed Patterns of Mental Activity;
• Highly Specialized Brain Structure, etc.
• Social Evolution, while more rapid than Biological Evolution, is also rather restricted in its Possibilities;
They, more than Technology, LIMIT our FUTURE.