Re: and visual library once again

["Steve Whalen" <SteveWhalen001@hotmail.com>]

Bob Spooner wrote:
> "Steve Whalen" <SteveWhalen001@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1129888684.681335.230450@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Between 50 and 100 years from now there will be a massive deflationary
> > cycle as powerful computers combined with cheap electricity and
> > increasingly capable robots eliminate the cost of "labor" from the
> > economy.  Since the price performance of robots will begin to follow
> > that of the computers that drive them, all the basics (food, clothing,
> > shelter) will have their costs driven down toward zero.  At some point
> > the government will tax the robots and pay everyone $500 a month which
> > will be more than enough to live on.  You will be able to choose to
> > program, or to watch TV, or to garden, or to serve others, or do
> > nothing, just like in Star Trek <g>. Then programming will mostly be
> > done by people who do it because they love it, because nobody has to
> > work just to survive.
>
> This sounds a lot like the predictions of about 40 years ago that with
> automation, etc. the biggest problem we would have now would be what to do
> with all the extra spare time. And yet the average person is working more
> hours now.
>

40 years ago such predictions were pipe dreams based on hoped for
breakthroughs in various technologies.  That was before "Moore's law"
was understood, and before having several decades of increases in the
power and price performance of computers.  We now have significant
evidence that the increase in computing power and cost effectiveness is
on an exponential, not a linear curve into the future.

Even if we only assume a linear increase in the power of computing
available (doubling every 18 months or so) in a few decades, computers
will be easily be able to do much of the "work" humans do even
_without_ the kinds of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence that
were prerequisites for the predictions of 40 years ago.  I agree with
Marvin Minsky's thesis that we are NOT likely to get computers to be
significantly "smarter" by the use of artificial intelligence (from his
book of about 1971).

But the staggering amounts of computing power that will be readily
available very cheaply a few decades from now _will_ make it relatively
easy to automate tasks that are currently impractical (not by emulating
the way humans think, but by brute force).  Much the way the DARPA
challenge of having an autonomous vehicle drive itself over 100 miles
through rough desert terrain was solved: not by elegant software, but
by practical engineering and brute force computing. In the time-frames
I was referring to (50 to 100 years from now), the power of today's
most powerful weather simulation super computers will fit inside a
hollowed out grain of sand.

> The cost of _distribution_ is very low. The cost of production, that is
> development, of software, especially _good_ software, is high. Very few
> companies are willing to make the kind of investment it takes to produce
> good software. That's one of the reasons Ada isn't more widely used.
> > --
> >
> > "In an efficient market, price equals marginal cost. Marginal cost of
> > software: zero."
> >
> Only if the development cost can be amortized over an infinite number of
> sales or licences or support contracts. Otherwise price does not equal
> marginal cost and the development cost is highly relevant.
>
> Bob

But development cost is NOT production cost. The economics ARE
different.  Every kind of significant endeavor has high design and
development costs (i.e. building the first working production quality
prototype).  Only computer software has a production / distribution
cost that is for all practical purposes $0.  There has never been a
comparable phenomenon. That's the big difference over the long run.

50+ years from now the cost of design and development of
"infrastructure" software will be amortized over large populations in
the same way current infrastructure (like highways or the Internet) is
paid for.  Doesn't matter whether it's a "government" spreading the
development costs (many highways) or a company (the U.S. telecoms
companies for the Internet in the U.S.).

Steve