Optical Computer here we come!
Makes me glad I am not concentrating in semiconductors but instead in microprocessor architecture. I wonder what the future of computers would look like? This will be incredibly hard to conceive because new technologies that can radically reshape the whole industry can appear as if spontaneously. As a futurist, one can either take great risks and envision a world so strange based on a completely random or made up technology or one can take no chance and envision a slightly improved reality in the very near future. The technology will be bizarre because that is most certainly what will happen. But the technology that will revolutionize the industry will inevitably be unforeseen and unpredictable given the nature of quantum physics and... well anything that we can use to do computation work.
A couple of things come to mind: optics (linked), quantum mechanics, and some unified theory I read somewhere.
Well optics is clearly the way to go after electron based computing. Light does not generate heat or nearly as much as electrons because of the nature of semiconductors (unless room temperature superconductors have been found, but even then electrons move much slower than light). If they can make switches that can operate on various wavelengths of light, then computers can become exponentially more powerful. Imagine instead of using boolean algebra we can use something much more complicated! Instead of base 2 we can use base 8 or 16! What would happen if computers operated naturally in hexadecimal? I guess that would be a computer engineer's wet dream, or worst nightmare if I think more about it. Figuring out just a simple unit like a decoder could get messy. I wonder how base 16 could work in an algebraic fashion. I guess it would be a lot easier if the actual hardware has been invented. What would yellow + blue equal to? Unless the wavelengths can some how merge or confuse the receptor into seeing green... but how would the receptor know what to do with a green? I guess it depends on how the thing operates if such a thing ever come into existence. So it is useless to ramble on on that subtopic.
Quantum mechanics have a lot to offer, even though scaling it to anything practical is still not feasible. Perhaps one day they will figure out how to scale it and operate on killobits or killoquebits at a time. Not much I can say about that since I don't know much beyond what Discovery channel has taught me, that and Isaac Asimov. The only thing I can think of is they better invent better encryption devices.
I remember reading about a theory of how everything is actually connected to each other, how every particle is connected to each other through another dimension. So what would appear to have been separated in our 3 dimensional space is actually not at all in another space. If we can tap into that, somehow, then processing power could approach infinity! Now I'm just rambling. It's getting too late for me to think of anything worthwhile for anyone to read.
In short, I think AI is achievable in the next hundred years. At least, it will be feel feasible from the perspective of science fiction :)
Oh wait, processing power doesn't have anything to do with self awareness!! I'll have to ramble about that next time... next week.
Until then!
A couple of things come to mind: optics (linked), quantum mechanics, and some unified theory I read somewhere.
Well optics is clearly the way to go after electron based computing. Light does not generate heat or nearly as much as electrons because of the nature of semiconductors (unless room temperature superconductors have been found, but even then electrons move much slower than light). If they can make switches that can operate on various wavelengths of light, then computers can become exponentially more powerful. Imagine instead of using boolean algebra we can use something much more complicated! Instead of base 2 we can use base 8 or 16! What would happen if computers operated naturally in hexadecimal? I guess that would be a computer engineer's wet dream, or worst nightmare if I think more about it. Figuring out just a simple unit like a decoder could get messy. I wonder how base 16 could work in an algebraic fashion. I guess it would be a lot easier if the actual hardware has been invented. What would yellow + blue equal to? Unless the wavelengths can some how merge or confuse the receptor into seeing green... but how would the receptor know what to do with a green? I guess it depends on how the thing operates if such a thing ever come into existence. So it is useless to ramble on on that subtopic.
Quantum mechanics have a lot to offer, even though scaling it to anything practical is still not feasible. Perhaps one day they will figure out how to scale it and operate on killobits or killoquebits at a time. Not much I can say about that since I don't know much beyond what Discovery channel has taught me, that and Isaac Asimov. The only thing I can think of is they better invent better encryption devices.
I remember reading about a theory of how everything is actually connected to each other, how every particle is connected to each other through another dimension. So what would appear to have been separated in our 3 dimensional space is actually not at all in another space. If we can tap into that, somehow, then processing power could approach infinity! Now I'm just rambling. It's getting too late for me to think of anything worthwhile for anyone to read.
In short, I think AI is achievable in the next hundred years. At least, it will be feel feasible from the perspective of science fiction :)
Oh wait, processing power doesn't have anything to do with self awareness!! I'll have to ramble about that next time... next week.
Until then!
posted by Omi-kun at
10:35 PM
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