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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

In 1978 it was even nerdier than that. CPU speed was measured in kilohertz. Often programs were entered using toggle switches and output was on seven-segment red LEDs. Color displays were all but unheard of. Non-volatile storage was on cassette tape. I know that probably sounds like a Monty Python sketch, but I swear this is actually true. I saw it with my own eyes.

Now here is a mind-boggling thought: there will come a time in the not-too-distant future when today's technology will seem as quaint and primitive as what I have just described.

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>there will come a time in the not-too-distant future when today's technology will seem as quaint and primitive as what I have just described.

Will it? In a decade, man landing on the moon will be closer to the first flight by the Wright Brothers than it is to today.

Maybe?

I was about to write a small essay on how everything from monitors to speeds seemed to be stagnating.

But I actually think there is a chance we might gain two new revolutionary[1]ish ways of interacting with computers within the next decade.

LLMs might truly bring us talking computers. Siri is old, and current AI is a fair mix of real advancement and overhyped, but once the dust settles, I wouldn't be surprised if a significant chunk of the population talks with their computer.

XR devices will likely keep shrinking and I figure somebody will find a killer app for them eventually. 20 years ago, a computer sat on a desk. Today I have one in my pocket. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if in 20 years, I have one in my glasses.

Of course, all of this is speculation. And I don't think the PC is threatened, but it will probably face competition from new ways of using computers.

[1]: As in different and not just slightly better than last years model.

Putain!!! So many memories. I started with an Australian clone of a TR80 with 16kb of memory (15772 bytes) and a tape reader to record my programs. I even implemented some basic routines for the Z80 processor that I would translate into bytes in a data section in my Basic program... For those who remember poke and peek were fun... 44 years this Christmas exactly... If my memory is correct the Z80 was cadenced at 3Hz... And now our computers speak to us, and very soon will boss us around...

>LLMs might truly bring us talking computers.

I have had a talking computer since 2004.

I've had a computer that listens to me since 2012 when I build my first neural network that could recognize my voice and convert it to bash commands reliably enough.

I've had an LLM powered version of that since the gpt 3 api came up and a local version with a llama 8b model today.

It's meh.

What I find ironic is that even though I'm dictating this to a $50k work station I'm still using Emacs to do it.

For you and me, its not going to be a massive change.

But for my grandmother, who keeps a little notebook with detailed instructions for how to message people on Facebook? For her this might greatly increase her capabilities.

It won't, because something the Tech Fetishists can't seem to notice (since they have zero awareness) is that controlling a computer by talking to it is awful. Unless you have a predefined structure that is basically just a textual re-implementation of a screen full of buttons for actions, you are left to just say what you want, and hope that the computer can magically understand what that means in a world of ambiguity.

We have had voice controlled machines since at least the 80s. There were voice controlled robots in MIT decades ago. It's just stupid and awful.

I wrote about it the other day, but every Windows computer since 2000 has included a fully functional, fairly well implemented, and mostly accurate voice control. Nobody uses it except people who have to use it, because voice is a terrible control plane. Humans are WAY better at choosing an option from a 2D grid using a mouse, even people who are afraid of computers. Voice is inherently slower, less accurate, less precise, and inherently ambiguous.

Hell, even as shown on Star Trek TNG, controlling a computer through your voice is awful. They show a few times characters having to do searches through a bunch of data and refine the output by adding more filter criteria, and always what they do is better done by a good excel spreadsheet.

People don't want voice controlled computers FFS, stop trying to force them. Stop trying to make fetch happen.

Now observe kids that have grown up with Siri/Alexa/hey Google being just there. My kid controls their multi-colored lights with Alexa. We taught them to search with voice on their (locked down) tablet before they could read and write. To them, it’s normal. Much like it’s normal for screens to respond to touch, and for photos and videos to be immediately viewed.

> In a decade, man landing on the moon will be closer to the first flight by the Wright Brothers than it is to today.

That's not a technology issue, so much as a "there is no pressing need to spend the money on this anymore". At the peak of the moon race, NASA was getting 5% of US government spending. In modern terms, that would be like spending 340 billion per year; it's just a _tremendous_ amount of money.

(That said, both the US and China do plan to make manned landings on the moon in the next decade, though the timelines may be... optimistic, as neither is indulging in crazy space-race-esque spending on it.)

>340 billion per year; it's just a _tremendous_ amount of money.

As the US medical system shows, you can flush more than that down the toilet every month and still not get any results.

To get things done you need true believers.

It's hard to motivate true believers to build the 1e6th crud app.

This is why no one in mainstream tech is nerdy any more and why all projects are over budget and under performing.

Thank you for crystallizing something that's been swimming in my unconscious for a long time.

Right, and in the next decade the PRC will invade Taiwan, removing Samsung's incentive to innovate.

This is true; in the 90's we had eye strain from the monitors but nobody got blisters on their fingers from flipping toggle switches!

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