Comment on Kitti

Here's a link to a comment I made on another one of my classmate's posts regarding how technology will be in 50 years.

https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8892920693426506688&postID=489927708018187815

As We May Think

Looking back at Vannevar Bush’s article, “As we may think,” there are a few things that I didn’t agree with or understand well. One thing that bothered me was the line, “Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization, it is true.” This was when he was speaking of combining different machines in order to record things easier. This bothers me for the simple fact that while languages have changed over time, such as with the induction of new words or slang, they basically remain the same. English is still English, Spanish is still Spanish, and so on. What he’s suggesting is a completely new language that everyone would have to learn in order to use the Voder and Vocoder combo effectively. While that may be possible for some people, for others I don’t think it would be possible.

Another thing that bothers me is that nowhere throughout the whole article does he mention anything about cost. Bush also seems to barely mention anything about practicality. While the memex is more or less a really old school version of a computer made from inventions of the time, Bush never seems to mention anything about how much this thing would cost. In the memex, all the information would be on microfilm and have plenty of space for it. “Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository.” I see a few problems with this. One, where would someone get all these pages and microfilm? Two, what about cost? I don’t think all that microfilm would be cheap. Lastly, any information put into the memex could easily become outdated, thus requiring the owner to replace it on almost a regular basis. I seriously doubt anyone would be able to do this. So while the functions and abilities that Bush imagined are common for today’s computers, the methods he imagined in creating and employing those abilities don’t seem quite as practical when thought out.

What this Blog does for me?

Since I’ve never had a blog before or even looked at one I must say this is a new experience for me. In all honesty I find this similar to my writer’s account at Fanfiction.net where I have posted a few of my works. In both cases it is a good idea to check up on it regularly and see what people think of you. In my case I can get feed back on my works and see how to improve them. With this blog it’s not that much different, just that people can comment on anything rather then just a specific thing. I think this blog helps me by allowing people to look at different aspects of myself and get feed back on my life. I may get help or I may get someone who’s in a similar position as me. In either case, it is interesting to see how people react to my life through the blog. I also like to think this will allow me to gain different views on things past, present, and in the future. Already since starting this I’ve become interested in other blogs and the things people write just as I did when I first signed up for Fanfiction.net. In any case, I shall continue to watch and use this blog and see what comes of it.

1st Post "How will we 'Think' in 50 years.

I really have no clue what to do with a blog, but since this is for a class of mine, I’ll try it.

For this first entry, I’d like to talk about a specific article that I had to read. “As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush. Despite being written during WWII, it had a few interesting pieces in it. For one thing, many of the gadgets he described, while ridicules in their operation, performed many of the functions modern day computers do. It struck me as interesting that he visualized what he wanted, namely the information and retrieval abilities of computers, in terms of technology of the day.

Here’s my question, do people of today do the same thing, 50 years after Bush’s time? Do we imagine great things for computers in the future another 50 years from now that may be much more plausible with another method? It’s an interesting thought. We imagine spaceships, teleporters, flying cars, and other such things, all controlled and or created with computers. Are these things possible, just in a different way then what we think? When Bush wrote this article, he talked about many of the capabilities that computers have in terms of what was available at the time. Storage of large amounts of information, the ability to store, retrieve, share, and organize it, and the recording of information through simple speech. All these things can be done by computers, a technology that hadn’t even been developed yet at the time this article was written.

Will it be the same for people today? Will the things we imagine computers being capable of in the future be done instead by a new form of technology? Many would say no, but then again Bush probably would have said no as well in his time. Besides, a lot can happen in 50 years, especially with how fast technology changes. Personally I could go either way. Yes computers are powerful and have evolved far beyond just the abilities that Bush described, but how far can they evolve? I guess that’s the real question this article brings up for me. Not how we will think, because people’s thinking processes are always changing, being shaped from the past and the present. It’s how far can any one type of technology evolve? I honestly couldn’t even begin to imagine how people will think 50 years from now. True it may contain similar things to how we currently think, but as I said, a lot can happen in 50 years.