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.