From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,915d37e7b8e0ec69 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "Steve Whalen" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: and visual library once again Date: 22 Oct 2005 23:31:18 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1130049078.633311.55000@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> References: <1129861178.782874.87870@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1129888684.681335.230450@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.238.135.165 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1130049083 20553 127.0.0.1 (23 Oct 2005 06:31:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 06:31:23 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: G2/0.2 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=68.238.135.165; posting-account=GBMmzA0AAABrZ0dHOASa3b2Cdf-RliH9 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5889 Date: 2005-10-22T23:31:18-07:00 List-Id: Bob Spooner wrote: > "Steve Whalen" 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 . 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