[1st-mile-nm] Exponential technological progress

[Steve Ross]

Just to be accurate, MIT had at least a few other computers, 
including an IBM 1620 at the Sloan School, and a PDP1 in the 
basement. I used both of them in the summer of 1963, a year 
before I graduated high school. Ray is referring to the IBM 
7090, the biggest machine in the place at the time.

All were (gasp!) transistorized.



Steven S. Ross
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Carroll Cagle wrote:
>   /By Ray Kurzweil/
> 
> /Washington// Post/
> 
> Sunday, April 13, 2008
> 
> M IT was so advanced in 1965 (the year I entered as a freshman) that it 
> actually had a computer. Housed in its own building, it cost $11 million 
> (in today's dollars) and was shared by all students and faculty. Four 
> decades later, the computer in your cellphone is a million times 
> smaller, a million times less expensive and a thousand times more 
> powerful. That's a billion-fold increase in the amount of computation 
> you can buy per dollar.
> 
> Yet as powerful as information technology is today, we will make another 
> billion-fold increase in capability (for the same cost) over the next 25 
> years. That's because information technology builds on itself -- we are 
> continually using the latest tools to create the next so they grow in 
> capability at an exponential rate. This doesn't just mean snazzier 
> cellphones. It means that change will rock every aspect of our world. 
> The exponential growth in computing speed will unlock a solution to 
> global warming, unmask the secret to longer life and solve myriad other 
> worldly conundrums.
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103326.html
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
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