Chapter 5:
How to Think about Trends
R. W. Hamming
(from Beyond Calculation)
Thoughts about Trends
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How to Think about Trends
• The Internal State of the Field:
 Main Problems and Tools to Attack;
 Workers avoid a Search for Radically New Approaches.
• Technical Support from Other Fields:
 Fast and Small Components of Computers;
 Price Estimation;
 Restraints by the Supporting Technologies.
• Surrounding Society Support:
 People Selection to study Computer Sciences;
 Restricted Social and Political Rules.
Thoughts about Trends
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Rules for Predicting the Future
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Short-Term Estimates are Optimistic
Long-Term Predictions are Pessimistic
What can happen  Science
What will happen  Engineering & Economics
What should happen  Morals, Ethics, accepted
or rejected by society.
Thoughts about Trends
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Hardware, Software, and Applications
• Chips production  General-Purpose Computing;
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Turing Machine/ Von Neumann Model & Algorithms;
Chips with Cache Memory and Pipelines built into them;
Parallel Computing;
Object Oriented Machines;
Functional Programming by Machines:
 Simulation of Index Registers (B-boxes);
 Floating Point Arithmetic, Vector Processing, C++.
Thoughts about Trends
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Hardware, Software, and Applications
(continued)
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Widely Used Languages & Libraries;
Built-in Languages (LISP, FORTRAN, APL, etc.);
“From Software To Hardware” Approach;
Improvement in Programming: after 50 years by a factor of 10;
Speedup of the Computers: after 50 years by a factor of 106;
The Speedup is less for Large Programs;
Neural Network Simulation (Artificial Intelligence);
Automatic Programming and Teaching;
Automatic Translator; Speech Recognition and Generation;
Understanding the meaning of the Sentence.
Thoughts about Trends
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Support from Other Fields
• Most Great Advances in a Field come from OUTSIDE:
 Transistor was invented by the Telephone Company to
improve their service;
 Telephone came from a teacher of the deaf;
 Carbon Dating in Archeology came from Physicists, etc.
• Information Truth or Falsity:
 Unorganized and not carefully selected information.
• Problem of Choice;
• Commercialization of TV, radio, Internet (?).
Thoughts about Trends
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Society
• The Matter of Privacy as a Technical and Social Problem;
• Cryptography;
• Economics:
 Restrictions on the numberof people entering the field;
 Support for Expensive Projects;
 Network Communications (unsatisfactory response);
 Intellectual Property Ownership, Patent System;
 High Quality Information.
• Tribal Behavior and Individuality/ Isolation.
• Growth of Knowledge; “Information Hiding”, Integrated Chips
Thoughts about Trends
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Human and Society Restrictions
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Results of Eons of Evolution;
Innate Drives;
Limited Bandwidth of Input and Output;
Modest Rate of Internally Processing Bits of Information;
Fixed Patterns of Mental Activity;
Highly Specialized Brain Structure, etc.
Social Evolution, while more rapid than Biological
Evolution, is also rather restricted in its Possibilities;
 They, more than Technology, LIMIT our FUTURE.
Thoughts about Trends
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