Re: tech miracles of the year 2000 as seen from 1950

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sun May 13 2001 - 20:41:28 MDT


Spike wrote:

>Tech prognostication is optimistic always in the short
>term, laughably pessimistic always in the long term.

I think that Spike has nailed it :-)

Perhaps the reason is the following. Laughable optimism
characterizes the possible developments that are easy to
see coming. So it was laughably optimistic, for example,
to believe that flying cars were immanent.

But in the long term, developments that couldn't have been
foreseen are the ones that dominate. And that's why the
long term prognostications are laughably pessimistic.

>Do you notice that the top grandmasters are no longer
>reporting their results against the best software? I
>suspect that it is scalping them on a regular basis
>these days.

I didn't realize that they were no longer reporting
their results. But regardless, any grandmaster today
can still reliably beat any commercial software.

Lee

>That day of the $2k chess champion is nearly upon us
>as the software evolves and the hardware just keeps
>Moore-ing along. spike



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