re: Tech Level Advancements
In reply to #6574 Tech Level advancements... by Anthony Neal
Anthony writes: >...Quite a reduction in size, and we haven't even advanced a Tech level!! (talking about CD players in specific, and computer and electronic technology in general) Well, to get picky, you CD player analogy is off a bit...if you look inside a tabletop CD player, most of it is either empty space, or power supply. The actual electronics and mechanism are generally much closer in size to your Discman. Of course, Sony has made a long corporate history of miniturizing things. However, some of the stuff can't go down. Recall, for instance your "Infamous" model hand computer, that at Tl11 is 0.5 kg, vs 50,000 at Tl5. Much of the weight is in things that cannot be reduced, like keyboards, and readable screens, or at least touchpad areas large enough to be useable. This limit has already been reached in our day and age...we can make computers that'll fit in a matchbook (AMD has a complete "XT on a chip"- all you add is memory and a battery, and the various connectors) The problem, as many companies have found when marketing them, is that humans have not miniturized well enough to keep pace, our fingers are still those comparatively pudgy things that get in each other's way when typing on a small keyboard (or like mine...when typing on a normal keyboard ;-). So size will not continue to go down...I suspect that in truth, size will hit a certain plateau, while function continues to go up. Besides, a 100 mg robot brain (a true peabrain!!) is pretty ludicrous...the miniturization required there pushes stuff way beyond physical limits. At that complexity/size ratio, you can't use electrons; they'll just tunnel around rather than stay in their appointed circuits. Photons would have similar problems. And biology, well, biology does pretty well at brains that size, but I'd be scared to let something with the brainpower of a pigeon control anything! Maybe I hit upon the answer earlier...use something like a complexity/size ratio rather than size alone. Of course if Cadillacs followed the same technology/pricing that computers have, they'd cost about $0.05 apiece (in quantity, more on carriers for suitable surface mounting :), and be 1/4" in size! Bruce Johnson The University of Arizona [email removed] play [email removed] work My opininons, Mine, Mine, all Mine! Bwahahahaha!