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Termyn8or -> RE: Watson (12/22/2010 2:14:43 AM)
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Although the genre of that piece is scifi, tis true that one must dream before inventing. At one point watching I thought about the Terminator movies, 1 & 2, I never watched anything beyond that, but then lo and behold they mention it. Go back to Star Trek TOS and think of Roddenberry's dreams. Some have come true if you know where to look. An example that sounded uncanny at first was the episode about Sherman's planet, the space station and a grain call quadrotriticale. In the fiction it was invented in Canada. Well triticale does exist, looking at the roots of the word, it is a cross between three different geni, or species of grain, and it was invented in Canada right around the time they said. The tricorder used by "Bones", sounds to me like a portable handheld CAT and MRI scanner, and one other thing since it also wears the prefix tri.
Years ago I predicted incorrectly that soon the most powerful microprocessors would be different, in that they would operate optically. The spped of electrons passing through a conductor is not necessarily the speed of light. That's why the RAM in your computer is udually placed as near as possible to the processor. Of course even the speed of light is not the speed of ligh except in a vacuum, so are we going to have vacuum tubes again ? I also believe that though my predictuion turned out to be incorrect as far as I know, I think it very possible that my prediction was only premature.
Part of the problem with technology being so advanced, is Man's laziness. We will want machines to take over much manual labor. Then you have to give the thing a battery and limbs. As long as these things don't get physical, you can always pull the plug.
Of course in the late 1970s (IIRC) they developed a self powered integrated circuit. And guess who did it - IBM. My Uncle who worked there said that it was a bit scary, you might not be able to turn it off. But now think of what year it is now. Thirty years ago it was 1980. What have they been up to since then ?
I've been to the patent office online, it was cool but...... Maybe I should go back and look for NEW patents.
T
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