Thursday, February 16, 2006

Advanced Technology

Originally posted Sept. 24 2005 at www.threeforcesofevil.typepad.com

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
By John Ross Harvey

My favourite author Arthur C. Clarke has said the following:
“Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Think about that.
If you were a boy in the 1960’s and
You saw a man with a laptop and a cell phone
You would wonder where the wires were
And how a Tv screen, with colour even, could fold
Phones in those days were several pounds, not ounces
A computer was not in the home
Those things we take for granted now would be Magic to him
If you went into Medieval England with a gun
They would wonder how you could possess such a small canon.
That would be Magic to them.
If someone from the future beamed down a la Star Trek
You’d shake your head and check if you were dreaming, but
You would liken the technology to Magic
A floppy disk from the 80’s was a 5 ¼” square and indeed floppy
720 KB to 1.44 MB
Apple created the 3 ½” floppy which was solid, same sizes in Mb
Did we call it solid? No we called it floppy.
Later we had Zip drives and Zip disks holding 100 to 250 MB
Those became obsolete when Cd’s could be Burned
How did copying become Burning?
Cd’s range from 600Mb to 800Mb generally and are cheap.
Why does technology in the computer industry drop in price?
Why does all other technology or products increase in price?
Those that increase in price are supposed to last longer.
The dropping prices of computer technology is because
Everything is obsolete within 6 months.
So it better be cheaper or you won’t upgrade
Microsoft unfortunately doesn’t abide by this concept
Neither does AutoCad by Autodesk
Essentially being a monopoly in their respective fields
They ignore the consumer demand for lower prices
As they own too much of the market to care.
This writing has now suffered from the Broken Telephone
No Magic can prevent that.

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