Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
million bytes (one three-thousandth of the 1979 price). Other types of
memory chips have seen similarly drastic reductions in cost.
The net result of these massive reductions in memory prices is that
computers nowadays have memory capacities that the programmers of
a generation ago could only dream of. When IBM launched their first
Personal Computer in 1981, the executives at IBM did not believe that
anyone would want or need more than 64 kilobtyes of RAM in their
computers,so64kilobytesiswhatIBMofferedatthattime,andnohard
disk. By 2004 the capacity of the memory chips in a standard desktop
personal computer had increased approximately 8,000-fold, not to men-
tion hard disks with 60,000 times as much memory as the PC's 64K of
1981. If memory costs continue to reduce at a similar rate over the next
50 years, the net effect will be that, for the same cost in today's terms, it
will be possible 50 years from now to have between a one million-fold
and nine million-fold increase in the memory capacities of our personal
computers but at the same cost.
The Knowledge Explosion
The number of patent applications throughout the developed world has
been increasing rapidly. The International Federation of Inventors' As-
sociations in Geneva reported that the total number of applications in-
creased from about 1.7 million per year in 1990 to about 5.8 million
in 1998. This is just one of the tangible signals that indicates massive
growth in the sum total of human knowledge and inventiveness, signals
that have been monitored by many observers from different areas of in-
terest. As long ago as 1937, Harry Barnes wrote
One of the most striking aspects of contemporary scientific progress
is the growing breadth and complexity of modern science and the
rapidity of the advances in the various fields. In 1700 a versatile sci-
entist like Leibnitz or Newton could be a master of the outstanding
facts of all natural science. In 1875 an able scholar might still have
under control the complete development of a single major branch
of science such as physics or chemistry. Today it is difficult for one
human mind to keep abreast of the discoveries made in a single
subdivision of physics or chemistry. [7]
This trend did not stop in 1937. Had Barnes been writing today he
would have had to replace “subdivision” with “sub-sub-division”, or per-
