Computersight -

The Future of Computers

Ever since the 1940s the computer has rapidly evolved into an ever more powerful and capable machine.  The computer has evolved more quickly in its roughly 50 year history than we have in the entire history of the human race.  This characteristic of rapid evolution alone could quite possibly lead to the downfall of the human race or the end of humans being considered the most evolved and most intelligent species.    

            Computers influence our everyday life.  If the computer that controls a stoplight stops functioning, the light will not change color.  The people in the cars are still fully functional, and the engines in the cars are still running, but as a result of the computer malfunction, the cars will not be able to move without running the risk of an accident.  If that car finally makes it through that intersection, and goes to a gas station to get gas but the computer that regulates the gas pumps is not functioning, he will be unable to get gas.  Even though there is gas available, the car will be unable to get gas because computers control the gas flow.  After that gas station incident, the driver wants to get to a new restaurant.  He was relying on his brand new GPS to get him there.  Even though his car can still drive, he is unable to get his destination because of another computer malfunction.  One trip has been affected in numerous ways because of computers and their functioning, or lack thereof.  Computers are already ruling our everyday lives without a single bit of artificial intelligence.  They do this by improving extremely rapidly. 

 Alan Bennett writes “Standards are always out of date.”  If cars had followed the same progression as computers have from the Intel 4004 (Intel’s first processor) to today’s processors you could now drive from San Francisco to New York (2572 miles) in about 13 seconds versus the almost two straight days it currently takes (Ebsco Host).

            The above examples are just small ways in which computers are influencing our everyday lives.  Apply these principals in a much broader spectrum and it will be apparent how computers could take over the world.  Although the modern computer as we know it has only been around for less than one hundred years, it has a history more complex than most things that are centuries old.  When one generally thinks of a computer he/she thinks of something that plugs into a wall.  Contrary to this belief, the first computers were actually mechanical.  The first device that was considered a computer was the abacus (PBS History of Computers).  That was the standard for over a thousand years until the invention of the slide rule.  In the 1800s Jacquard’s Loom was invented.  The loom used a series of punch cards with patterns on them.   If a card had one pattern the loom did one thing.  If it had another pattern it did the other thing (Computer Revolution).  This combination of trues and falses (referred to as Booleans) and “if statements” is the basis of all modern computer logic.  A Boolean is a value that is either true or false.  Basically, all computer logic is a series of “if statements” and they go as follows. If the Boolean it true; do A.  If the Boolean is false; do B.  Even today’s most complicated applications can be broken down into this logic.

            In 1943 the construction of the first ever fully programmable full electric computer began.  This computer took three years and over half of a million dollars to build.  It was finally finished in 1946.  It was dubbed the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator).  It could perform up to 5000 calculations per second.  This was over a hundred times faster than any other machine that preceded it.  Although the ENIAC took weeks to reprogram and occupied an entire room, it was quite possibly the most important milestone in computing history to date.  It could be for this reason that the ENIAC is regarded by most as the father of modern computers (Inventors of the modern computer).

            The ENIAC and other computers like it were the standard for the next ten years or so.  They became slightly smaller and more powerful over this span but still had the same basic architecture which was a room full of bulky vacuum tubes.  In 1958 Texas Instrument was responsible for the next major milestone in computing history.  The first integrated circuit was made by Texas Instruments.  Instead of using bulky vacuum tubes this integrated circuit used transistors.  A transistor is like a tiny electrical switch that can be turned on or off millions of times per second.  Millions of transistors make up the majority of today’s processors.  In 1958 the transistor was the size of a palm of a human hand (Transistor-History). Now they are about 45 nanometers thick.  A nanometer is one one-billionth the size of a meter.  To put that into scale, a molecule of water is a few thousand nanometers and a germ is about a thousand nanometers.  (Nanooze) All of today’s electronics are made with transistors.  “Without the transistor, some say our servers would be three stories high, and laptops would be a prop on Star Trek. Our televisions would still use vacuum tubes, and our cars couldn’t guide us to the nearest Indian restaurant.” (The Transistor) The transistor is as important to computing as the brick is to construction.   Because of the small size of these transistors, more and more power can be packed onto the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer.  The more transistors one can fit in a processor, the faster it will become.  Due to new technologies these transistors are reduced in size by half every 18 months.  This leads to faster and faster processors. This phenomenon of reducing in size by fifty percent every 18 months has a name: Moore’s Law. (See Appendix 2) This was named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the Intel Corporation, who was the first one to discover and document this law.  Additionally, Moore’s law applies to many other things in the computing field such as: the cost per transistor is cut in half every 18 months, computing performance per cost, computer power consumption, Calculations per second per 1000 dollars (See Appendix 2), RAM (See Appendix 1) storage capabilities, pixels per dollar on a camera and network capacity (Intel).    This amazing trend of evolution is part of what gives the computer its world domination potential.  Compared to Moore’s law, the entire evolution of the human race seems like a few years of computer time.  For humans to match the pace of Moore’s law, every 18 months we would need to think and process information twice as quickly, run off of fifty percent less food, have memories that are twice as good, eyes that can see twice as well and be able to communicate twice as quickly.

            A huge step that demonstrated many of the Moore’s Law principles happened in 1977.  A computer was integrated into the Oldsmobile Toronado. It showed the increasing power and decreasing size of computers. It was used to control the spark plugs and improved gas efficiency over ten percent (New York Times).  This milestone was the first time that a microprocessor was ever integrated a device other than a computer.  This opened the door to the computer being integrated into more and more things.  Part of the strength of the computer is its ability to control things like rockets, robots and thousands of other things.  Its capabilities are limitless.  In today’s world computers are used for hundreds of things including movies/audio playback and editing, navigation, simulations, games, work, data collection, research and communication.   Computer technology can be applied to simple items, such as cash registers, or complex machinery, such as the space shuttle. Fifteen years ago almost none of these could be accomplished using computers.  Millions of people in the United States have a computer that can do many of the things named above.  This is just another example of how the field is constantly evolving and our lives are becoming more dependent on the technology provided by the computer.

            Other than their amazing power to evolve, what else gives computers such a great potential?  There are many factors that include, networking, being able to shut off, have variable sizes, control other sizes, work together, and they don’t need water (FutuComp). 

            Networking or connecting many computers through protocols like the internet is a powerful tool.  (Future of Computers) Without computers, people’s communication abilities are limited.  Prior to computers we had telephones with very limited capacity.  They used switchboards. Now, thanks to the computer and its limitless capabilities we can talk to people using a computer controlled telephone or by live video over the internet.  With the power of the internet, computers can communicate with any other computer in the world in mere milliseconds. 

The internet was founded in the 50s by computer programmers looking for a way to remotely program computers without having to physically go into the computer.  In the theoretical “human on computer war” this would give computers another immense advantage.  On this battlefield which, (since computers are everywhere), would be the whole world, the computers would be able to communicate.  They could give orders, request supplies, and communicate news.  People would be limited to word of mouth and cars to transport their information and supplies. 

            Increased communications are not the computer’s only advantage over humans.  Another advantage that computers have over us is their multiple sizes.  Humans almost always are in a certain size range.  However, computers and their parts can be as small as the head of a nail to as big as buildings.    Computer and/or their parts can be integrated into things like missiles, transportation and “artificial bodies”.  

            Unlike humans who need to take that extra time to think for themselves, computers can work together.  (FutuComp) Unlike in our society where after awhile having a multitude of people working on one problem can become “too many cooks in the kitchen,” thousands of computers can process information together.  The computer takes out the “human element” and avoids the potential for conflict and agreement based on emotions. This “computer army” could have one centralized “brain” (made of thousands of supercomputers) anywhere in the world and that could act as the mind for the entire army.  Therefore, one unit could make its next choice instantly, without having a processing unit.  This is similar to a remote control kids toy.  The child acts as the brain for the car and uses the remote to send a signal to the car, which then follows the order without processing one bit of information.    However, in our case the remote would think for itself and send a signal to many different cars. 

            Along with being able to think together, the ideal computer will be able to perform physically with another computer.  That is like two motorcycles joining to become a car.  Or when one computer “dies” another computer could use its parts.  This is equivalent to one human dying and another losing an arm.  Then the armless guy would be able to reattach the dead man’s arm instantly without surgery.  That’s not the only medical advantage computers have over people.

            Although it is improving fairly rapidly, the human lifespan is fairly short (Future of Computers).  We are born, we live and we die.  Humans, no matter what we do, do not currently have the potential to be around forever, Computers do.  Since they are mechanical pieces or parts, they can be replaced with new and improved parts.  Computers have the ability to stop all function and then resume where they left off at any given time.  This way they can do things like go into space without needing to breathe or eat or use resources.  In fact computers don’t need to breathe at all.  They just need a little power.  They can just be run by solar panels, batteries or some kind of generator.  Other than that, they are self sufficient.  On the other hand, humans need food, water, oxygen, exercise/activity, rest, etc.  Computers can travel long distances (for example into space) and go to “sleep” for long periods of time and then almost immediately resume what they are doing.  That can be useful for transporting them.

            With all of these advantages that computers have over us how will we ever prevent them from taking over the world?  The answer is that we must carefully monitor the computer’s progress, and be careful not to become too heavily reliant on them as a society.  Even then I think that as a society we will, someday in the near future, be ruled by computers because they have so many advantages over us and because they have a plethora of possible forms and uses.