No, it won’t break, unless you also have grown 100 times stronger over the last decade. But a decade from now, it may break your mind…

No, this is not a spiritual entry, although I hope that one day I may be able to write such an entry with that title… Rather it is about a more down to earth science. 100 times is how much more powerful a computer is today than 10 years ago.

Moore’s Law implies that the capacity of computers doubles every 18 months. That might sound impressive, but perhaps not astounding. To astonishment comes when we realize that the doubling is doubling again after another year and a half, and so on. This amounts to approximately an order on magnitude — a factor of 10 — every five years. And five years is a period of time most of us can remember pretty well, if we set our minds to it.

In other words, the average computer five years ago was 10 times weaker than today. So, what difference has this made in our lives?

At first, you probably think like I did: “Nothing at all.” I mean, five years ago I was writing my journal, surfing the web, and playing City of Heroes and The Sims 2. That is what I still do, so what happened to the revolution?

Well, for one thing, five years ago I did not have YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter. And especially not on my mobile phone.  My mobile phone had something like twenty grainy characters in its display, and was used for talking. Actually it was barely used at all, because even then I did not talk if I could avoid it, more or less. But you get the point.

So mobile phones have basically become computers. How about the computers? Well, I am still playing The Sims 2 and City of Heroes, but with much more content, faster and with more detail on a larger screen, with a cheaper computer.

Five years ago, streaming video over the Internet was still experimental, and not reliable for most of us. There were services offering such an experience, but the movies tended to be small and grainy and you might still not be able to complete them without pauses or without the whole process breaking down. Today, streaming video is trivial for many of us.. though not all, as this depends on the communications infrastructure (copper cables, fiber or wireless network) in the area.

Five years ago, speech recognition was still not something I could recommend unless you were seriously disabled. I used it occasionally because of the wrist pain, but not for long, because of the high error rate.  Today, it is only marginally worse than dictating to a well educated human. But it still requires a fairly strong computer. It is not like you can dictate reliably to your netbook or mobile phone (although Google’s Nexus One made a decent attempt).

Your computing experience will vary:  A friend of mine is using the same computer and mobile phone as five years ago.  On the other hand of the spectrum, if I had bought a high-end video card, I would be able to run even modern games like Age of Conan at full tilt.  (This online game is not recommended due to its evil atmosphere, but as a demonstration of what computers can do in terms of lifelike video, it is possibly second only to Crysis.)

If I go another five years back in my journal archive, I come to the age of The Sims 1 and the tail end of the life of Daggerfall.  Both of these games look decidedly long in the tooth.  For Daggerfall this is to be expected, as it was released in August 1996.  But The Sims was the hit game of the year 2000, and I made comments about how it caused my computer to grow hot. The amazingly lifelike pictures and behavior of the small people in the game was a marvel.  Yet today they strike us as simplistic in body and mind, merely a prelude to the more realistic later iterations.

Back in 2000, I was still waiting for the broadband, and had to pay “through the nose” or “an arm and a leg” (not literally) for slow dial-up access to the Internet.  Going online was not something to undertake trivially: One time I got into one of the earliest online games, I ended up with a bill I just barely was able to work off without hurting my credit.

The grainy Japanese cartoons I downloaded occasionally back then took overnight to download, if I succeeded at all. Still, I was impressed at the time that it was even possible. From across the globe, at that! This newfangled “Internet” thing sure was amazing!

***

I don’t really think we are getting 100 times more effect out of our computers than in the year 2000.  Some of the raw power is lost in sloppy programming. It is a fact that programming is still more of an art than just plain production, and a good programmer can still run rings around a large team of mediocre programmers. In fact, if the team gets large enough, it may start performing worse and worse.  But thanks to ever faster computer, it is no longer necessary to optimize your code. As long as it does what you want, even if it uses an ineffective way to get there, you are good to go. After all, in a year and a half it will run twice as fast again.

But a lot really has happened, and some of it is like science fiction come true:  A computer taking dictation like a secretary, or a cell phone performing the functions that had required a computer only a few years ago. Actually, the ability to stream music from the sky with a choice between millions of tracks, is literally taken from one of my science fiction novel attempts approximately 20 years ago. Today I can do this on my cell phone, at high quality and barely noticeable cost.

So what will the computers of 2015 or 2020 bring, if we manage to not blow up the planet before that?

My best guess today would be that computing will go further mobile over the next five years. The cell phone of 2015 will probably take dictation much like my home computer does today. The screen resolution will also be much higher than today, although I don’t think it is practical to have a screen resolution comparable to today’s home computers. It will likely have handwriting recognition for those situations where you don’t want to speak out loud, although on-screen keyboards will be more popular since they will be pretty much typo proof.

I honestly cannot predict the computer of 2020. I believe computers will be embedded in most everyday things, so if will be perfectly normal to talk to your stereo or your TV and expect them to react accordingly. Not to mention your car, which may or may not drive on its own for the most part. Mobile phones will likely be able to translate between most of the world’s national languages, written or spoken.

But when it comes to computer games, online or off-line (if such a distinction is even meaningful anymore)… I have no idea what the future will bring, when computers are 100 times stronger than today.