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that talks about a similar computer at MIT. I find all the pre transistor computation really interesting. Shannon was doing some really early work on what was, at the time, thought of as AI. Putting a mouse through a maze with movable walls. All with just circuits, no CPU. The circuits were not fixed, they had some branching based on phone switch tech (IIRC).
I love the tone of amazement and excitement in the video. The images were amazing, but the tone really stuck with me. I wonder what could be done to bring back that type of mass amazement and excitement towards technology? When I think of the future I'm blown away by the possibilities of CRISPER, 3d printing, energy storage, block chains, driver-less cars, UBI, space exploration and more. We are advancing so quickly…
That's why all the 50s and 60s stuff is so breathlessly unconditionally optimistic, and subsequent material has switched to skepticism.
People have become used to "new technology announcement === a few years later we're going to hear about the terrible downside, while the originators lied about all the safety risks". Driverless cars are absolutely in the middle of that at the moment. Vaping is currently experiencing a safety backlash.
I love the tone of amazement and excitement in the video. The images were amazing, but the tone really stuck with me. I wonder what could be done to bring back that type of mass amazement and excitement towards technology? When I think of the future I'm blown away by the possibilities of CRISPER, 3d printing, energy storage, block chains, driver-less cars, UBI, space exploration and more. We are advancing so quickly…
Things started to go wrong and limitations started to appear. The 1970s saw the US hit three big limitations: the failure of Vietnam, the oil crisis, and the collapse of Iran. On the technology front, that's when the environmental and social downsides of technology started to become really prominent. Three Mile Island, CFCs, leaded petrol, and so on. That's why all the 50s and 60s stuff is so breathlessly uncondition…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not unlike the way floating point rounding errors accumulate, in fact. The only difference is you can mitigate those to a degree by increasing the digits of precision, whereas that can't really be done on a mechanical computer.
You do that by increasing the physical size of the components
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mid 70's were just about optimal. Lots of stuff you could pick apart and make new things from with standardized parts. After that more and more integrated circuits made it into consumer electronics and if the volume was large enough they'd be custom so useless to either repair or be used as a source of parts.
That’s an illusion. Could you, in the mid-’70s, repair a vacuum tube? A capacitor? No. You threw it away and got a new one, and you didn’t care how it worked inside. Older artisans were probably even then horrified by the ‘new’ age of people who didn’t know how to properly blow glass bulbs. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113359