Introducing The Computer of 2010 (written in 2000)

http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0821/087.html

by chaostheory • 17 years ago

4 8 17 years ago

SwellJoe2• 17 years ago

The "optoelectronic" thing must have been a pretty brief phase in imagineering in the computer industry. I vaguely recall it, but I don't think it was around for long as the "this is where we're going next" idea, was it?

Obviously holographic memory and storage has disappointed us, as well, but I think flash memory has more than made up for it. I was just thinking today how cool and outlandish it would have been ten years ago to have 16GB stored in something about the size and thickness of a dime (Micro SD). Full-sized hard disks back then were in the 40 to 80 GB range, and I don't recall flash drives existing at all.

mooism2• 17 years ago

I thought it was amusing that they predicted terabyte hard disks using holography, but we got there with the same basic technology (magnetism) we were using back then.

azbob• 17 years ago

Ten years ago desktop hard drives were 4-8GB. You're off by an order of magnitude.

SwellJoe2• 17 years ago

A couple of Google searches reveals that IBM introduced a 16.8GB drive in 1997, and the 137GB ATA limitation was broken in 2002. I don't think I'm off by an order of magnitude, and it looks like 4-8GB was the 1997-ish era desktop disk size.

Ah, here we go: http://www.disktrend.com/newsrig.htm

Which shows that drives in the 40-80GB range were being sold in both 1998 and 1999, but the bulk of revenues was in the 5-10 and the 10-20 GB range. So, there were definitely 40GB drives in 1999, but I'll concede that based on those sales numbers the average new desktop in 1999 would have probably had a ~10GB drive. So, I'm not quite off by an order of magnitude, but my memory was a couple of years off.

tybris• 17 years ago

Futurologists always think of what is technically feasible, rarely of what is economically feasible. Economic miracles like silicon valley happen once a century. The rest of the time we're just expanding the legacy.

switchOver• 17 years ago

Aww I thought it would be about the MMIX but I always get confused by Roman numerals

jacobolus• 17 years ago

> At this point, computers will need a new architecture, one that depends less on electrons and more on... well...what else? Optics.

They got it backwards. What they meant was, the cameras of 2010 will depend less on optics and more on ... electrons. :)

hvs• 17 years ago

10 years seems to be the standard prediction timeframe. The cure for various diseases is always 10 years away, a replacement for oil is always 10 years away, etc.

10 years seems like a long time, but its not. It's certainly not a long time in research fields. And it's usually not long enough to take a new idea to fruition.

Introducing The Computer of 2010 (written in 2000)

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