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The Revolution Yet To Happen
March 1, 1999
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Download Document
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BibTex
Authors

Gordon Bell

Jim Gray
Publication Type
Inproceedings
Pages
22
Number
MSR-TR-98-44

Abstract
Abstract
By 2047 almost all information will be in cyberspace (1984) – including all knowledge and
creative works. All information about physical objects including humans, buildings, processes,
and organizations will be online. This trend is both desirable and inevitable. Cyberspace will
provide the basis for wonderful new ways to inform, entertain, and educate people. The
information and the corresponding systems will streamline commerce, but will also provide new
levels of personal service, health care, and automation. The most significant benefit will be a
breakthrough in our ability to remotely communicate with one another using all our senses. The
ACM and the transistor were born in 1947. At that time the stored program computer was a
revolutionary idea and the transistor was just a curiosity. Both ideas evolved rapidly. By the mid
1960s integrated circuits appeared – allowing mass fabrication of transistors on silicon
substrates. This allowed low-cost mass-produced computers. These technologies enabled
extraordinary increases in processing speed and memory coupled with extraordinary price
declines. The only form of processing and memory more easily, cheaply, and rapidly fabricated
is the human brain. Peter Cohrane (1996) estimates the brain to have a processing power of
around 1000 million-million operations per second, (one Petaops) and a memory of 10
Terabytes. If current trends continue, computers could have these capabilities by 2047. Such
computers could be “on body― personal assistants able to recall everything one reads,
hears, and sees.
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