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Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

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

#91

Post by kleiba »

jhancock wrote: post #14
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…

"Do you remember life pre-cellphones? When you left your house you literally dropped off the map." Yes. I miss those days.

It's your own choice still. I don't have a cell phone and never had one.

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

#92

Post by bad_user »

nitrogen wrote: post #81
bad_user wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 manufac…

Consuming less (I mean at the consumer level, not raw resources) is hardly a way to promote the progress of our civilization. Finding a way to sustainably consume ever more will yield much greater outcomes in technology and happiness.

When the consumption rate is increasing exponentially, I don't know how you can even imagine that we'll ever be able to sustainably consume more.

Unless you're talking about StarTrek where food can materialize at the push of a button, or after a "warp maximum; engage" they can arrive at an inhabitable planet in one minute.

In the meantime, this planet doesn't grow any larger and its resources are limited.

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

#93

Post by mechanical_fish »

ugh wrote: post #26
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.

This drives me nuts whenever I read anything by Connie Willis. Her time travel books play (partly, obviously) decades in the future yet there are constantly people running around and frantically looking for each other and not finding anyone. I always want to scream “Pick up your goddamn cellphone!” (Some of those were written in the nineties which explains their lack of cellphones but even her most recent books from…

Pity the poor artist who establishes their reputation in one medium, then sees the medium do a big shift.

Willis probably could write books which fully encompass the cellphone-era worldview. But will they be Connie Willis books? Or will the loss of all those old tropes make her new style inevitably different from her best-selling old style?

Think of PG Wodehouse, blithely writing novels set in early-twentieth-century England as late as 1975. (Though this example is a bit contrived, since some would argue that Wodehouse wrote about a society that never existed.) Or Bach, plugging away on his late Baroque masterworks years after the Baroque went out of style.

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

#94

Post by frobozz »

anamax wrote: post #41
itsnotvalid wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet engines are actually getting replaced by other alternatives, but those alternatives require different sets of infrastructure which are non-existent (such as for fuel cells or electric cars) Also, there are external forces driving the way to the opposite side of the story (aka keeping combustion engines, for money, of course) Sometimes I just think that the Americans use too much cars (one person driving a car wit…

> Sometimes I just think that the Americans use too much cars (one person driving a car with four seats is an insult to the nature.) I'm guessing that you'd be mad if more of us had multiple cars, one with one seat, one with two seats, one with three, and another with four. (An extra car just for gas mileage rarely saves money because $5-7k buys a lot of gas.) I would like to know how you know how many other people t…

The obvious alternative is not to have several different cars, but to live closer to where you work, shop and play.

Another alternative more obvious than keeping a garage full of differently-sized vehicles is to improve the fuel-per-passenger-mile ratio by banding together with other travellers who are going the same way. This is how buses and trains work.

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

#95

Post by jasonlotito »

gaius wrote: post #72
DannoHung wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What am I looking at here? The Star Trek communicators are voice-only.

You're forgetting that in those cases, beaming down was a result not of lack of video, but because of interference, or the classic "You have to see this for yourself" bit. More importantly, it made for a better show that way.

Interstellar video was common enough, but I'd question the importance of having video conferencing on top of their voice only communicators. I'd go further, but then I'd be showing how much time I've wasted thinking about this.

DS9>*, btw.

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

#96

Post by grammaton »

Maybe I missed something here, but...when did Gary Kasparov suddenly become qualified to comment on technological and computing progress? No mention of the internet, for instance, which kind of tends to undermine the ability to take his comments seriously. For that matter, what makes the Apple II so revolutionary compared to it's predecessors and successors? No mention of that.

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

#97

Post by grannyg00se »

"I feel we are now living in the era of the slowest technological progress in the past few hundred years"

Can someone point out an impressive list of technological advancements that occurred throughout the 1700s that would be unmatched by a list of technological advancements that occurred throughout the last 70 years?

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

#98

Post by jonhendry »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #93
ugh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This drives me nuts whenever I read anything by Connie Willis. Her time travel books play (partly, obviously) decades in the future yet there are constantly people running around and frantically looking for each other and not finding anyone. I always want to scream “Pick up your goddamn cellphone!” (Some of those were written in the nineties which explains their lack of cellphones but even her most recent books from…

Pity the poor artist who establishes their reputation in one medium, then sees the medium do a big shift. Willis probably could write books which fully encompass the cellphone-era worldview. But will they be Connie Willis books? Or will the loss of all those old tropes make her new style inevitably different from her best-selling old style? Think of PG Wodehouse, blithely writing novels set in early-twentieth-century…

"(Though this example is a bit contrived, since some would argue that Wodehouse wrote about a society that never existed.) "

Just think of the Drones club as a bunch of bun-tossing elves.

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

#99

Post by fjh »

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…

You don't only lack the evidence, I think it is fair to say that the evidence contradicts your opinion. If you look at people like Judit Polgár, it seems like practice is far more important than any kind of intrinsic ability.

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

#100

Post by anamax »

frobozz wrote: post #94
anamax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I just think that the Americans use too much cars (one person driving a car with four seats is an insult to the nature.) I'm guessing that you'd be mad if more of us had multiple cars, one with one seat, one with two seats, one with three, and another with four. (An extra car just for gas mileage rarely saves money because $5-7k buys a lot of gas.) I would like to know how you know how many other people t…

The obvious alternative is not to have several different cars, but to live closer to where you work, shop and play. Another alternative more obvious than keeping a garage full of differently-sized vehicles is to improve the fuel-per-passenger-mile ratio by banding together with other travellers who are going the same way. This is how buses and trains work.

>> one person driving a car with four seats is an insult to the nature.)

> The obvious alternative is not to have several different cars, but to live closer to where you work, shop and play.

Reread the complaint - driving less doesn't solve it.

> but to live closer to where you work, shop and play.

Those are three (or more) places. You may not be able to live close to all of them. For example, I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey. At times, we've worked other places between PA and SJ.

Where can we live that would be close enough to satisfy you?

> This is how buses and trains work.

Buses and trains don't necessarily go where I want when I want.

Consider 101. It looks like a lot of people going to/from SF until you look at the individuals in those cars. There aren't a small number of end-points. And many of those folks will make side trips that trains/buses don't acomodate.

I've ridden Cal Train (I was on the first baby-bullet and that wasn't my first commute). It's great for some things but it isn't a general solution. That's why it doesn't have much ridership.

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