That makes the case for a tape cartridge the size of a station wagon (or a 747).

But look at it from this perspective. In a few years there will be cars that drive themselves everywhere. A complex action that seemed so out of reach of automation will be reduced to the execution of an algorithm working well in day to day situations. So it isn't farfetched to imagine that learning itself may be reduced to the execution of an algorithm and people everywhere, let alone machines, can become practically overnight experts if they just follow the steps of the algorithm.

So the hand wringing over too much pressure on kids may need to stop because there will be a lot of pressure on everyone. People will have to fluidly move from domain to domain taking on whatever comes along. There may be many advanced tools to help smooth the transition from one problem solving event to the next but those who try to stay in a niche may find it more like a rut.

> It's not an age thing.

Definitely not. The fact that someone actually needs their typewriter fixed in 2013 means there are many younger than Whitlock still decades behind. But their printer will work when the power is out, and their system will never download a trojan.

Yes, I knew something was off when I saw the title. Actually he has an invention to make Slashdot less boring.

Sadly, most of the people who work at Amazon aren't Amazons. Any company that wants to grow should hire a couple Amazons.

Maybe a pure cable would be too heavy, but Edison showed us that an aerodynamic cable would work. His aerodynamic cable was a kite on a wire. Insulate and hang on tight.

It is a barrier, but that being said it just means no one has done it yet. It doesn't mean it's impossible. A barrier is something to strive to overcome and in spite of all the striving, it feels like a fully blown case of Zeno's paradox, for a while. Only now that we're so much closer to the day that an exaflops will be reached, it seems that we must all chatter about it lest no one will have enough motivation to actually make it happen.

One may even say that the human brain does not understand. It is capable of logic and hammers out bazillions of logical derivations, evaluates and reevaluates until it determines a select few ideas that are granted the highest usability or belief.

But from this view of the mind, what is to say a fast enough computer, with some elegant programming, can't compete with people in the department of "producing text that is considered valuable"? People are not even close to perfect in this department, when you think of all the crapola making its way into physical publication, so if a machine is even marginally better, look out Nellie.

A thinking machine might not be all that smart at the beginning. But if a remotely intelligent machine is found possible, there will be an incredible push to achieve the most intelligent machine, and even human intelligence will be surpassed.

Ironically, he made something for us to experience a virtual reality where the end of the game did not mean life was over in the real world. Yet in reality the same circumstances really mean life is over. So tactics for staying alive in a game need to be applied in the real world all the time: having an out, acquiring protection, etc. The world is friendly enough to let us develop the science and technology to simulate a virtual world but the real world isn't always that friendly either.

> MTBF ... the machine will fail before it can compute anything meaningful

MTBF is statistical though. This can be overcome. Look at it this way. Surely the totality of servers on the Internet would exceed exascale computing power but how many servers fail at any instant in time? Perhaps a few. Ok, but somehow when I surf to my favorite sites, they are almost always up. That means they are doing something to keep them reliable. Such measures may increase the cost of each node but if you want to achieve the necessary uptime in order to finish the job, that would be required.

Node reliability might receive less investment for the sake of keeping nodes compact though. So it comes down to the manufacturers to increase MTBF for all consumers. And assemblers have to be careful not to slam the hardware around

Also, each node or cluster has to be periodically tested or probed to determine whether it is reliable. If a node or cluster can perform a calculation reliably at random times, then the results from the node may be deemed correct. If not, then the circumstances that cause the node to misbehave may have to be worked around or the node has to be replaced. A highly reliable system may emerge.

The exascale system will be built but there may be a limit on the number of nodes that any organization is willing to pony up for because if there is a huge leap of size from the previous #1 system, there is the obvious expense to consider as well as the obsolescence factor as new technology makes the same speed achievable for less only a few years later.

Surely, someone who thinks a Dyson sphere is a useful appliance is a firm believer in the goodness of global warming.

It's never fast enough. If I can cut every little 5 second wait to 1 second or 1/4 second, I'll buy a new machine every time.

But if the manufacturers don't make higher clock speeds, people start thinking they will never get any faster. They lose interest in one-upping each other. What does that do for PC sales?

> China has been willing to do it on the cheap for the rest of the world. More recently they have realized that other nations have been exporting their environmental issue to China by buying cheap Chinese rare earths. This is coming to an end as China sensibly restricts exports of these materials.

Economics of the moment is all it is. A few years from now and the price of this shit will go up to the point where a serious look will be taken at refining it domestically while the Chinese refuse to roll over for everyone else in the world. Once the technology is in place for clean mining (may take some time) it'll be as though this whole debate never happened, pricewise.

Why do you live so far from work?

Calling for major tax breaks to move within a 5 minute commute.

>> If we progress to the point where all of our jobs can be done by computers... what should we do?

In the future cheap unprofitable or low-margin jobs that machines will do (that might include a lot of things that today's highly-paid people struggle with) will have to be run by government. No one else want to do that work anyways.

People will want to be in control of things that matter, things that are challenging, such as finding a way to move out of the solar system. Even the computers will agree to that.