“The repeal of Moore’s Law would create a renaissance for software development. Only then will we finally be able to create software that will run on a stable and enduring platform. In schools, the life span of a desk is 25 years, a textbook is 10 years, and a computer is three years, tops. Which of these devices costs the most to buy and operate? Why, the PC, of course. Which has residual value when its useful life is over? Not the PC—it costs money to dispose of. At least books can be burned for heat. Until technology slows down enough for computing platforms to last long enough to be economically viable, they won’t be truly intrinsic to education. So the end of Moore’s Law, while it may look bad, would actually be very good.”
—Steve Wozniak (via mattlehrer and mikehudack)
Woz’s big picture take on this is wonderful. I think there’s another equally significant inflection point that runs in the same spirit, and this is that Moore’s Law often represents for software development and computing what government bailouts do for the auto industry: architectures, operating systems, languages, and libraries more often than not grow bloated and become wildly inefficient, and yet we don’t abandon them because they are the source of so many jobs and they’re the foundation of entire sectors of the economy—like Detroit, they’re simply too big to fail. So we throw more hardware at a problem whose chief difficulty in the first place was complacency, therefore only further exacerbating and institutionalizing that problem’s chronic inadequacies.
hilker liked this
anthropophagous liked this
xyzprincess liked this
talby liked this
precis liked this
jhnbrssndn
reblogged this from
langer
jonathansadlowe liked this
langer
reblogged this from
mikehudack
and added:
mikehudack
reblogged this from
mattlehrer
devaburger
reblogged this from
mattlehrer
mattlehrer
posted this
