"Many of you will still be alive in 50 years. It’s interesting to think about what life will be like in 50 years technologically and otherwise. Predictions are risky, especially when they’re about the future, but I believe we can make some pretty good guesses. To predict a predictable future, you need to look at the past. What was technological life like 50 years ago? 50 years ago was 1959. The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking. This is a vaguely horrifying fact which is little appreciated. In 1959, we had computers, international telephony, advanced programming languages like Lisp, which remains the most advanced programming language, routine commercial jet flight, atomic power, internal combustion engines about the same as modern ones, supersonic fighter planes, television and the transistor....."
>>1
The garbage collector was also so slow in Lisp so you just coded until you ran out of memory and then went home and let the garbage collector do it's job during the night.
1960 — noSICP, anywhere on the planet. 2010 — universal access to SICP from any point on Earth with internet connectivity.
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Anonymous2010-10-09 23:05
LISP vs SICP...
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Anonymous2010-10-10 18:24
>graphene
>carbon nanotubes
>packet radio, then wifi
>handheld teleconferencing (fucking took long enough)
>neural implants (though the research for this began in the 60s)
>cross-continent uav drones
>nootropics
>search engines
>wiki software that anybody can run
>quad core processors for domestic use
In 1959 you couldn't even SPEAK the word cancer in public - it was like shouting "I love the GPL!" at a Microsoft board meeting. These days, a large amount of cancers don't kill us, and chemo is less likely to horribly mutilate us. Besides, comparing today's computers to those of 1959 is like looking at the Hoover dam and saying "Beavers can do that, you retard. It's nothing special." Oh, and there's BILLIONS of them.
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Anonymous2010-10-11 10:55
People have built wind-propelled cars that can sail faster than the wind. That's something that has eluded mankind for the thousands of years we've been harnessing air currents to do our bidding.
>>21 it was like shouting "I love the GPL!" at a Microsoft board meeting.
Incidentally, Microsoft is now pushing all the people on its blogging platform onto Wordpress
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Anonymous2010-10-11 22:50
sump
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Anonymous2010-10-12 2:49
>>24
The same wordpress that's in the main Debian repos?
GREAT SUCCESS
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Anonymous2010-10-12 2:59
>>23
you can throw a cd-r pretty far if you catch the wind right on a blustery day
Name:
Anonymous2010-10-12 5:37
>>27
you can throw a cd-r but you can't throw a cdr
Name:
Anonymous2010-10-12 6:11
"Computer networks came a year or two after 1959 and didn’t change very much, other than how we waste time in the office, and whom advertisers pay." congrats, youre a donut.
>>6 The garbage collector was also so slow in Lisp so you just coded until you ran out of memory and then went home and let the garbage collector do it's job during the night.
Are you saying that this is no longer the case?