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Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

blogs.forbes.com

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Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#61

Post by gaius »

nikster wrote: post #25
seanlinmt wrote: post #21

A number of people has been saying that the US has not been leading technologically. So if not the US, which country is doing better technologically? Japan? Even if it's Japan, its economy isn't doing that well either.

Innovation may be down in the USA, but it's definitely better than in other places. The potential is there - the same cannot be said for anywhere else in the world. Europeans take their ideas to the U.S. because in Europe there's no money for innovations. There's no infrastructure for it. China is trying the wrong approach and producing nothing. Japan has incremental improvements ingrained in its culture. However I t…

A government will spent a trillion dollars on "innovation" before even contemplating relaxing a law that's stifling it.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#62

Post by DannoHung »

gaius wrote: post #59
InclinedPlane wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubiquitous cell phones are definitely a revolutionary development. This becomes obvious when you read or watch fiction of any sort. How many story lines would be completely disrupted by the presence of a cell phone? As it turns out, a great many, even for stories being written today, as many writers haven't fully absorbed the way things have changed.

Haha yes, even Star Trek, they can travel at warp speed but the away team can't send an MMS back to the ship, the captain has to beam down personally and see for himself...

Uhhh.... http://www.google.com/images?q=Trek+communicator&um=1&#3...

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#63

Post by InclinedPlane »

gaius wrote: post #59
InclinedPlane wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubiquitous cell phones are definitely a revolutionary development. This becomes obvious when you read or watch fiction of any sort. How many story lines would be completely disrupted by the presence of a cell phone? As it turns out, a great many, even for stories being written today, as many writers haven't fully absorbed the way things have changed.

Haha yes, even Star Trek, they can travel at warp speed but the away team can't send an MMS back to the ship, the captain has to beam down personally and see for himself...

This is even sillier in the case of Star Trek since they could use even a Polaroid or film camera and beam the film/photos back up to the ship (or, of course, a data crystal or what-have-you).

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#64

Post by gaius »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #63
gaius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha yes, even Star Trek, they can travel at warp speed but the away team can't send an MMS back to the ship, the captain has to beam down personally and see for himself...

This is even sillier in the case of Star Trek since they could use even a Polaroid or film camera and beam the film/photos back up to the ship (or, of course, a data crystal or what-have-you).

Beaming Polaroids back to the ship would be amazing!

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#65

Post by joe_the_user »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #5
simonsarris wrote: post #2

It's rare I want to call someone with conservative technological estimates unrealistic. Usually I see the opposite. But I don't think Kasparov is on the mark here. The cellphone was invented after that and has forever changed the way we reach people and fundamentally how they are reachable. Do you remember life pre-cellphones? When you left your house you literally dropped off the map. There was no way of anyone know…

Ubiquitous cell phones are definitely a revolutionary development. This becomes obvious when you read or watch fiction of any sort. How many story lines would be completely disrupted by the presence of a cell phone? As it turns out, a great many, even for stories being written today, as many writers haven't fully absorbed the way things have changed.

Very interesting point.

I feel like the situation is even more extreme in a sense. It seems like ubiquitous information disrupts a large percentage of all possible story plots.

Most story plots hinge on ignorance and discovery. With no physical personification of ignorance, a plot is simply less compelling.

Imagine - * Odysseus travels through exotic, distant lands, that he just forget to do Google earth on beforehand, * Why wait for Godot when you can just give him a call? * etc.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#66

Post by Yzupnick »

astrofinch wrote: post #33
mattmaroon wrote: post #20

This clearly shows that being very wise and being very intelligent are not the same thing.

I'm not sure that being the best chess player in the world is evidence that Kasparov is very intelligent--any more than being the best poker player, the best piano player, or even the best marketer. Chess is a learned skill just like any of those. Put another way, looking at all of the world's very most intelligent people, the fraction that care enough about chess to become the world champion if they had the aptitude…

I'm willing to bet that the best Poker player, piano player and marketer are all very intelligent people. Being the best at something often takes both extreme intelligence and a lot of practice.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#67

Post by rozim »

geidden wrote: post #49
astrofinch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that being the best chess player in the world is evidence that Kasparov is very intelligent--any more than being the best poker player, the best piano player, or even the best marketer. Chess is a learned skill just like any of those. Put another way, looking at all of the world's very most intelligent people, the fraction that care enough about chess to become the world champion if they had the aptitude…

Point of fact: chess is learned but only to a point, probably around 2100-2150 ELO. That is the limit of what most people can accomplish with a lot of study and hard work. Pushing beyond that and into the Super to Elite Grandmaster range (2550-2800) requires extraordinary levels of memory, concentration, calculation and pattern matching. Levels that can't be instilled in someone through any amount of training. A pers…

I think Kasparov disagrees with you via "...working hard is also part of an individual’s talent"

though to be fair he follows with

"I think working hard is sometimes just as important to having a talent."

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6069

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#68

Post by fhars »

simonsarris wrote: post #2

It's rare I want to call someone with conservative technological estimates unrealistic. Usually I see the opposite. But I don't think Kasparov is on the mark here. The cellphone was invented after that and has forever changed the way we reach people and fundamentally how they are reachable. Do you remember life pre-cellphones? When you left your house you literally dropped off the map. There was no way of anyone know…

You've got your chronology wrong, the cell phone was introduced 1973 (that's why the OpenMoko device was called Neo 1973), predating the Apple ][ by four years.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#69

Post by bad_user »

Detrus wrote: post #38
DLWormwood wrote: post #9

I’m not sure that Kasparov (or anybody) has a right to criticize the rate of progress for the last few decades or centuries. Since the Renaissance, human progress has grown leaps and bounds at such an astonishing rate, compared with before, that we may have outpaced the ability for the human animal to adapt without negative repercussions. (Some might argue that this already happened all the way back to agriculture.)…

We already have huge negative repercussions. Climate change, mass extinction, overpopulation thanks to industrial agriculture. Now it might be more dangerous if tech slowed down, because we need new tech to fix disasters caused by the old. In some industries, like energy, automotive, people have been catching their collective breath for decades and now we're in trouble.

IMHO, that's exactly the thinking that got us into trouble in the first place: that we have the capability to change nature, however we want, and yet we can't even predict earthquakes or give accurate weather forecasts.

Heck, we even have problems estimating the ecological footprint of anything.

E.g. that proof of concept electrical car that's extra efficient might require some rare metals to produce, and the manufacturing itself could have a bigger impact on nature than its usage. Only in the US there are tens of millions of drivers that will wait in line to buy such a car. And that electricity has to come from somewhere, like a nuclear power plant (which according to many, is less destructive to nature as wind or solar power).

This is a social problem that cannot be solved by technology. If you want to change the world, find a way to make people consume less.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#70

Post by throwAway_29 »

nice article! For those trying to do research, for research's sake... how many path-breaking PhD's in Computer Science has US produced? (For that matter, any country in the world-but let's stick with US) I feel that the entire culture has been skewed towards incremental improvements. I bet, 90% of papers churned out, would be having conclusions something like.. "improved the performance of X by y% under the conditions L,M,N" where (L,M,N) might be near-impossible to occur simultaneously in real life. You cant disregard/dismiss Gary's points- sure,Apple II might not have been the last technological innovation, but overall- he has raised a valid point.
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