REPOST: (for the sake of clarity, I’ve reposted my previous Week 2 comments so that they all appear in the same place, not as a post and comment. Apologies for the redundancy.)
Moore’s Law (Wikipedia and Video):
I had never heard of Moore’s Law—in fact, I didn’t even know that Intel had been around since the 60s. Perhaps I shouldn’t so openly admit to my relative ignorance, but because I’d never come across it, Moore’s Law struck me as particularly interesting.
At first I was amazed by the accuracy of Moore’s prediction. That such a relatively exacting mathematical prediction about an industry synonymous with innovation would hold up over four or five decades seemed uncanny. Then the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy popped into my head. When this notion was also mentioned by editors of the Wikipedia article, I began to consider it more seriously.
I think Moore’s Law is a fine example of the double-edged sword that such predictions constitute. While they are necessary, when possible, in order to help paint a clearer picture of the future directions of industry and research, the picture they paint can itself be limiting. However, used as a heuristic for research and development, Moore’s Law could be seen to negatively impact the speed of innovation.
The two year pace set by Moore’s Law seems to fit very well into the notion of planned obsolescence. If you make a product in 2000 that you know will be made inferior in 2002 and that this trend is likely to continue for X innovative iterations (X*2), why speed up research and development? You’d effectively decrease the span of time (X*Y where Y<2) during which you would likely have a body of consumers active in the cycle of ‘purchase a new product every 2 years.’
I’m not entirely so cynical, but perhaps I’ll wait until 2015 to buy my next iPod. Haha.
Wikipedia Entry: Computers
Regarding the wikipedia entry on computers: I found this article to be helpful, as I'm not well acquainted with the inner workings of computers. For those of you in a similar boat, I highly recommend taking a look at the textbook for this course. It provides a very basic (sometimes comically so) introduction to the various components of computers and other technologies.
The Computer Museum:
As for the computer museum website: I loved this site. I spent some time browsing around the various pages, and the whole time I couldn't get another site out of my head:
www.synthmuseum.com
For those of you enjoy listening to music that involves synthesizers (e.g. Aphex Twin, Emerson Lake & Palmer, The Cure, Radiohead), this is a really cool site that covers the history, development and use of synthesizers.
