[Bytesmiths]

<i>(Catching up on this and that...)</i>

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('johnmarkos', 's')oftware and OS makers would focus on making better use of the power they have rather than always demanding more for bloated programs . . . but now I'm dreaming.

[Trab]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bytesmiths', '
')
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Trab', 'M')ost home users of PC's have way more horsepower than they need for most tasks.

[Danimal]

I think the important issue here is whether we will have computers at all, and not whether processor speed and memory density continues to double every couple years. Moore's law will eventually break down, whether we hit a real physical limit we can't find a solution to, or we run out of resouces to develop the next technology.

We can continue to pour all our efforts into faster, more powerful (and power-consuming) computers, and when our highly-specialized, mass-produced, global distribution system falls apart, we won't be able to make any more computers. We'll have a lot of machines already built that will keep running for a long time, but they will eventually wear out. When they do, we won't have any more computers. Let's face it: microchips are not user-servicable parts.

On the other hand, we could start working hard towards finding ways of producing microchips and other computer parts more locally. If we figure out how to do that, we can maintain routers, switches, phone lines, radios, hard drives, etc. well into the future. If we can't, I'm afraid we'll lose the greatest collaborative medium we've ever created--the internet. It will be a lot easier to cope with adjusting to new lifestyles in small, agrarian communites if we can still communicate with people in other communities to solve problems collectively. Losing all the information we've already gathered and published on the internet would also be quite tragic.

Getting back to a Moore's Law peak: if we keep the Internet, then people will always find ways to improve the design of computers. Exponential growth in fast/efficient designs would likely be replaced by an adjustment-period hiccup, and subsequent slow, linear improvements in computing. If we don't keep the internet, then yes--very sharp peak, classic overshoot and die-off of computing.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Most home users of PC's have way more horsepower than they need for most tasks.
[/qutoe]

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bytesmiths', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Trab', 'M')ost home users of PC's have way more horsepower than they need for most tasks.

[Guest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')One of my favorite thinkers, Garrett Hardin, says that there are three ways to create wealth: from matter, from energy, or from information. The first two are inherently limited; the third is not.

I'd say the misuse of information is the cause of our problems, not the notion that information should not be limited, and certainly not the efficient processing and management of information, except to the degree that it requires matter and energy.

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Anonymous', 'I') enjoy technology... I don't hold any illusions that it will save us, my contention is that technology has gotten us into this predicament in the first place, if anyting it will only make matters worse.

[bart]

I wish this discussion about computers and the Internet were in flashing red lights! Losing those two technologies would be like losing books and literacy.

The same view seemed to be shared by Howard Odum, the systems ecologist who did energy analysis. He wrote about it in his last book <i>The Prosperous Way Down</i>, co-authored with his wife Elisabeth.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The Odums', '
')Peace and Maximum Empower by Global Sharing of Information: When essential information is broadly shared on a large scale, it becomes long-lasting, a unifying mechanism. Information sharing can replace the restrictive information competition of growth capitalism.

Television and the internet have changed the global organization away from military territorialism. If global ethics for equitable trade and sharing information can prevail, global empower and peace can be protected by the information mutualism that maximizes empower. The dangerous alternative is fragmenting societies warring for residual resources.
....
Priority Use of Hydroelectric Power: To continue the essentials of the world's civilization requires that global information networks be sustained. But this requires a priority in allocating electric power at a time when electric power from fossil and nuclear fuels becomes more expensive
....
Since the prosperous way down depends on sharing a global information network, electricity must have high priority. The prosperous way down may well depend on society's ability to give priority to the greater need for geographic coherence of the larger scale.

From: Onlline extracts from the the Prosperous Way Down

[gg3]

Interesting topic!

Preservation of accumulated information, and the continued accumulation of information, are key defining characteristics of civilization.

The energy requirements of the telecom grids are minor compared to most of our other common and private infrastructure. The networks will exist long after the last SUV has been retired to a museum.

Re. the platform wars: the reason Wintel got popular in business is because the consultants who install business networks were able to claim that they could get "great deals" on the hardware, and then earn their dough via the much greater amount of billable hours it takes to maintain, compared to Apple/Mac infrastructure. Speaking as someone who's in the industry (our firm provides open-source infrastructure that interoperates with whatever someone wants on their desktop).

Bytesmiths, re Hardin: (paraphrase) "create wealth from matter, from energy, or from information."

Very similar to my idea of creating wealth from expansion in the spatial domain (find more oil deposits, expand the area of space-based photovoltaics beaming power down to Earth, generally increase the *area* from which a resource is extracted), the time domain (increase or decrease the *rate* of extraction of a resource within a given area), or the information domain (increase the embodied information content per unit of matter or energy, i.e. efficiency and technological progress).

Efficiency of equipment:

The current generation of Panasonic PBXs (the KXTDA series) have reduced power consumption by 75% compared to their previous generation (the KXTD series). By the way, some of the features in the KXTDA revision 1.1, and upcoming rev. 2.0 and the one that will follow, plus the current -xx5 voicemail machines (KXTVS-95, 125, 225, 325) were originally designed by me. (Panasonic is uniquely responsive to input from its grassroots dealership base; they actively solicit our input; and I was told that a memo I wrote about a voicemail issue got read by everyone from the lab in Secaucus NJ up to the engineering team in Japan. Try that with any other company of their size and scope.)


Re. Guest re. information being wholly dependent on the physical world:

No it's not, it comes to us from little ghosts who whisper in our ears. (ha, caught you looking!:-).

Seriously: Information is meaning, and meaning is subjective.

You can run a string of random bits or noise through a CPU or any other communications system, and it will not consume any more or less energy than if you run a Shakespeare text or scripture or a paper on quantum physics, or some other highly-meaningful information through it.

The brain of a person who is intoxicated to the point of insensibility, the brain of a terrorist barbarian plotting to blow up a library, the brain of a soldier protecting the library, and the brain of a scientist doing research in the library, all consume the same amount of caloric energy, and the computers on their desks consume the same amount of electricity depending only on make & model. The drunk produces no information, the terrorist seeks to destroy information, the soldier seeks to protect information, and the scientist seeks to create information.

As for the limit, we have hardly discovered it much less reached it. The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe, with bandwidth and holographic storage capabilities that put our tabletop terabytes to shame. Then you link all those brains together with the internet and telephones, and you have a global decentralized central nervous system of unimaginable capacity.

Information unlimited: the only limit is the universe itself, and we're not there yet:-). How many ways shall ye know the Mind of God...?


What's on my network:

All the workstations are laptops; lower power consumption plus portability; mounted on stands when on my desk; extension keyboards/mice used for ergonomics.

Main machine is an Apple iBook G4 running MacOSX 10.3.5. A G3 iBook for backup/redundancy. One G3-233 for other tasks, and an antique Powerbook 165 with System 7.5 for a fax server that's only turned on when we're expecting a fax. One HP ze-4600 running WinXP for my PBX programming software (we keep this one away from the internet for the usual security reasons). One BSD router that connects the PBX and the Macs to the internet.

The PBX is a Panasonic KXTDA-50 with KXTVS-125 voicemail, a couple of digital keyphones, and a handful of analog phones including some dialphones from the mid 20th century. My office extension rings on an English GPO 232 phone from the 1940s, which sits next to my Panasonic KXT-7636 set, just for contrast's sake!:-).

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Interesting topic!

Preservation of accumulated information, and the continued accumulation of information, are key defining characteristics of civilization.

The energy requirements of the telecom grids are minor compared to most of our other common and private infrastructure. The networks will exist long after the last SUV has been retired to a museum.

[WebHubbleTelescope]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bytesmiths', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dvanharn', 't')he system is still noisy as hell - it takes 3 fans to carry away the waste heat of the newer machines.

[bart]

Concerned, I think you are making two arguments.

1. Energy processing requires energy and is dependent on the physical world.

I have no argument with this point, except that it neglects what is different about information. Information is flexible and powerful in a way that energy and matter are not.

This leverage is apparent in the field of computer servicing with which I am familar. A minor cost in diagnostic software yields $ and energy savings -- through greater uptime, less scrap, and higher utilization (hence fewer units needed). It's not that the diagnostic software is free or independent of energy, but that the costs are miniscule in relation to the benefits.

Consider the difference between marginal cost for one additional truck versus one additional copy of a program. Once a piece of writing or a program has been authored, the marginal cost of additional copies is almost 0.

So, you are right that ultimately there are limits on information, but the limits are much farther away than for our use of matter and energy.

2. Later in your post, $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('you', 'I') don't doubt the increases in energy efficiency. This translates directly into more energy consumption Jevons Paradox as greater and greater volumes of demand are stimulated.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Concerned, I think you are making two arguments.

1. Energy processing requires energy and is dependent on the physical world.

I have no argument with this point, except that it neglects what is different about information. Information is flexible and powerful in a way that energy and matter are not.

This leverage is apparent in the field of computer servicing with which I am familar. A minor cost in diagnostic software yields $ and energy savings -- through greater uptime, less scrap, and higher utilization (hence fewer units needed). It's not that the diagnostic software is free or independent of energy, but that the costs are miniscule in relation to the benefits.

[bart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', 'W')hat economic system do you see where Jevons Paradox will be slowed or reversed? I can conceptualise such a system but are humans smart enough to implement something along those lines.

[tmazanec1]

Agreed. That's the key question -- whatever may come, will we be able to preserve information and networks?

In my best case scenario, yes. In my worst case scenario, no (although I would hope we would remember that, for example, everything is made of atoms and the Earth circles the sun, a typical star). I see in between cases as improbable.

[Concerned]

Some food for thought. The perils of technology.

http://www.humboldt.edu/~progress/entropy.html

(a small snippet)

If more technology is the answer, what is the question?

Step back and think about the implications of the incessant drive toward our Internet future. Where is the whole project leading? It is estimated that $250 billion (in the U.S. alone) will be spent on "refreshing" the Internet "infrastructure" in the next few years. If that much money were instead spent on schools and libraries and NOT technology, well, we'd have a society operating on a different set of assumptions. It's hard to remember the days before computers prevailed when students were somehow able to learn without them. Now, learning seems impossible without computers. Over the last 20 years, there's also been an increase in the "vocationality" of education, another pressure towards the technologizing of education.

[bart]

According to the BBC: ("Google to scan famous libraries" ):
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he libraries of five of the world's most important academic institutions are to be digitised by Google.

Scanned pages from books in the public domain will then be made available for search and reading online.

The full libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities, as well as archives at Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library are included....

About one million books will be scanned by Google....

"This is the day the world changes," said John Wilkin, a University of Michigan librarian working with Google.

[Concerned]

Project Gutenberg was attempting to do the same way before Google.

http://promo.net/pg/

It seems to be a little slow at the moment but I have viewed many texts available from this site.

On the whole I think it's a great idea, is it sustainable in the long term that is the question. Without something awesome like fusion I'd say it's unlikely, that does not mean us humans are going to stop trying.

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bart', '[')url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4094271.stm]"Google to scan famous libraries"[/url]
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he libraries of five of the world's most important academic institutions are to be digitised by Google...

"This is the day the world changes," said John Wilkin, a University of Michigan librarian working with Google.

[tmazanec1]

Walt Disney...the guy who mangled The Jungle Book so badly you could use Rudyard Kipling's body to power an airplane propeller. I understand he also fired any enployee who wore a mustache except himself.