{"id":2143,"date":"2007-11-01T08:44:59","date_gmt":"2007-11-01T15:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2143"},"modified":"2007-11-01T09:04:09","modified_gmt":"2007-11-01T16:04:09","slug":"the-luddites-lament-at-the-new-yorker-why-wont-the-world-just-hold-still","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2143\/the-luddites-lament-at-the-new-yorker-why-wont-the-world-just-hold-still\/","title":{"rendered":"The Luddite’s lament at The New Yorker:<\/I> Why won’t the world just hold still?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day Cathy asked me what a semi-conductor is. It takes courage to ask me an open-ended question, because you risk getting the full answer. We started with integrated circuits, which is what most people mean when that say “semi-conductor,” then got into the conductive properties of metals and minerals, slid from there to quantum physics and electron tunneling, jumping to the idea of electronic gates, which leads back to Boolean algebra, all of which briefly encapsulates the idea of contemporary computer science.<\/p>\n

But: The role of semi-conductors in all this is relatively recent, so we talked about Pascal’s automated looms, Babbage’s Analytical Engine, Ada Lovelace’s invention of software engineering, Turing’s Enigma and the idea of the Turing machine — which, despite all the hype you read, is the underlying engineering for the computer in front of you right now, scaled up a bazillion times.<\/p>\n

The Turing machine was mechanical. The role of semi-conductors in data processing came even later than that. So: We talked about integrated circuits, about Moore’s Law and most importantly about the information explosion, the practical corollary of Moore’s Law. We continued with the idea of the Semantic Web, the notion that, very soon, instead of you trying to find the data you want, the data you want will avidly be trying to find you.<\/p>\n

There’s more: We talked about multi-core computer processors and their implications, particularly about their application in compute-intensive functions. As a matter of physics, there is a finite limit to Moore’s Law. Heat is a significant problem right now, but even postulating computers running immersed in liquid nitrogen, data moves at the speed of light. At some point, no matter how close together chip-makers manage to plant circuits, propagation delay will limit further speed increases.<\/p>\n

But this is where massively-parallel multi-core processors come into their own. Imagine not two cores, or four, or eight — the most you can buy in a computer store right now. Imagine 64 cores, or 256, or 1,024 microprocessors running side-by-side, splitting jobs up into 1,024 separate tasks and performing all of them simultaneously.<\/p>\n

There’s even more at the outer edges of Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day Cathy asked me what a semi-conductor is. It takes courage to ask me an open-ended question, because you risk getting the full answer. We started with integrated circuits, which is what most people mean when that say “semi-conductor,” then got into the conductive properties of metals and minerals, slid from there to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,24,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disintermediation","category-egoism-in-action","category-technology","no-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5705,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5705\/you-dont-hear-many-msm-analysts-making-this-obvious-connection\/","url_meta":{"origin":2143,"position":0},"title":"“…you don’t hear many MSM analysts making this obvious connection”","author":"Richard Riccelli","date":"November 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Interesting piece at kausfiles.com.\u00a0 Excerpt: Real estate prices started to plummet just as expectations of imminent semi-amnesty were turning into the reality of harsher enforcement. Schools in immigrant heavy areas of L.A. for example,\u00a0reported declining enrollments in 2006.\u00a0 The\u00a0nationwide character of the Gran Salida\u00a0became apparent,\u00a0even to the press\u00a0by early 2008.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":312,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/312\/the-fsbo-and-bubba-variety-hour-how-to-make-the-buyers-agents-dance\/","url_meta":{"origin":2143,"position":1},"title":"The FSBO and BUBBA variety hour: How to make the buyer’s agents dance . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Our friend, colleague and personal marketing god, Richard Riccelli is getting ready to FSBO his Boston townhouse. He's spent a year planning this down to the last detail, including condo-izing his property into two apartments so that they can be sold separately -- or together if someone wants a residence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1691,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1691\/missing-links-playing-idea-tag-leads-to-a-web-20-ish-way-of-improving-bloodhoundblog-posts\/","url_meta":{"origin":2143,"position":2},"title":"Missing links? Playing idea-tag leads to a Web 2.0-ish way of improving BloodhoundBlog posts","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, start here. I had an idea for an organic method of collecting arguments, pro and con, about divorcing real estate commissions. Using a PHP form, I could collect user-submitted links to apposite articles, then show them all in an \"included\" PHP file in each post about divorced commissions. That\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1931,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1931\/i-invented-a-brand-new-social-networking-technology-today-so-once-somebody-implements-it-i-want-my-iradio-for-free\/","url_meta":{"origin":2143,"position":3},"title":"I invented a brand new social networking technology today, so, once somebody implements it, I want my iRadio for free","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. Even so, here's a cool idea I had today. First, art is selection. You have to stand back, because I can define art seven different ways in seven seconds. But one thing that art is is the selection of seemingly disparate elements into a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Casual Friday"","block_context":{"text":"Casual Friday","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/casual-friday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8622,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/8622\/when-a-bloodhound-loses-the-scent-uptime-can-be-a-dawgs-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":2143,"position":4},"title":"When a Bloodhound loses the scent, uptime can be a dawg’s life","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that we've had availability problems lately. In fact, we've had four problems, and three of them may be fully addressed. First we had memory issues, which I didn't understand at first. Y'all would have seen them as memory errors or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3250,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3250\/the-just-exactly-how-dumb-are-you-realtor-spam-of-the-day-effection-might-come-at-a-high-price-but-at-least-its-fleeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":2143,"position":5},"title":"The just-exactly-how-dumb-are-you Realtor-spam of the day: Effection might come at a high price, but at least it’s fleeting","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This one came to me as real-world spam, and it has a cloying kind of plausibility to it: Hmm... That's almost kindasorta a good idea, isn't it? Laptop in the car? Maybe not so much. Wi-Fi-enabled PDF? They're out there, but the iPhone.2 is going to EDGE every other hand-held\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}