robots - it has begun
Apr. 19th, 2006 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI am fond of telling people that the robotic revolution is just around the corner, and that it will make the computer revolution look insignificant.
When I was a kid the only computers were massive, multi-million-dollar things that took up whole floors of giant corporations. There were only perhaps a couple of dozen of them in the world and you needed to be a mathematician to operate them. I remember telling people that we would all own computers one day and that I would have a handheld one that I'd read books and magazine articles on. People generally thought I was a hopeless dreamer.
I was right about computers and I was right about reading books on computer, though I overestimated the size. My Palm computer is much smaller and vastly more powerful than the A4-size tablet computer I expected.
Now I tell people that the robotic revolution is coming, and they still think I'm a hopeless dreamer. :)
I have been trying to replace my thousands of paper books with electronic copies so that I can carry them out of the house in my pocket in case of emergency, and move house without packing a truck up with all the paper. Some books I've re-bought, but the corporations have discouraged me from that by over-pricing them and rigging them with locks that can be triggered by irrelevant things. So I have taken to downloading my replacement electronic books from the peer-to-peer network... though I still buy books when I can defeat the locks and safeguard my money.
A couple of years ago I looked on the peer-to-peer networks for books on robotics. There were some, but none that I was looking for. Yesterday I looked again and was astonished! There are now hundreds of books on robotics there. While most other topics are relatively unchanged from years ago, the robotics scene has exploded.
It now reminds me of the early days of hobby computing, back in the early 80s, when people were playing with computers because they were cool toys. A few people had some idea of their potential, but they were nowhere near that capability yet. This is where robots are now.
And if we have learned anything about the pace of technology it is that it accelerates. The robot revolution will almost certainly happen faster than the computer revolution did.
It has begun.
When I was a kid the only computers were massive, multi-million-dollar things that took up whole floors of giant corporations. There were only perhaps a couple of dozen of them in the world and you needed to be a mathematician to operate them. I remember telling people that we would all own computers one day and that I would have a handheld one that I'd read books and magazine articles on. People generally thought I was a hopeless dreamer.
I was right about computers and I was right about reading books on computer, though I overestimated the size. My Palm computer is much smaller and vastly more powerful than the A4-size tablet computer I expected.
Now I tell people that the robotic revolution is coming, and they still think I'm a hopeless dreamer. :)
I have been trying to replace my thousands of paper books with electronic copies so that I can carry them out of the house in my pocket in case of emergency, and move house without packing a truck up with all the paper. Some books I've re-bought, but the corporations have discouraged me from that by over-pricing them and rigging them with locks that can be triggered by irrelevant things. So I have taken to downloading my replacement electronic books from the peer-to-peer network... though I still buy books when I can defeat the locks and safeguard my money.
A couple of years ago I looked on the peer-to-peer networks for books on robotics. There were some, but none that I was looking for. Yesterday I looked again and was astonished! There are now hundreds of books on robotics there. While most other topics are relatively unchanged from years ago, the robotics scene has exploded.
It now reminds me of the early days of hobby computing, back in the early 80s, when people were playing with computers because they were cool toys. A few people had some idea of their potential, but they were nowhere near that capability yet. This is where robots are now.
And if we have learned anything about the pace of technology it is that it accelerates. The robot revolution will almost certainly happen faster than the computer revolution did.
It has begun.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-19 01:24 pm (UTC)You need some spiffy background music to go with that... like "Dun da dun dun..."
;-)