What have we achieved since the moon landing?

To answer Vlads question - he says we had primitive computers and landed on the moon. we have super ones now in our houses but what advancement have we made?? Have we wasted the technology on games?

I would say the following

Human genome sequencing

Mobile Phone technology including smart phones 4G etc videos, skype etc

3D TV and ultra high definition 4K TV. Also the redundancy of the cathode-ray tube at last!

3D printers including printing using laser sintering for metals. This is revolutionary and in future will revolutionise production methods. The skill of the lathe operator may not be in so high a demand.

Speech recognition is getting there nearly

the MP3 revolution. Now we can store our entire collection in a postage stamp almost.

Special effects in films 

The computer games industry makes as much revenue as the movie industry

High resolution imaging medical devices ie cat scans and body scanners etc

So what needs doing in the next 10 years?

gyansorova@gmail.com wrote:

> To answer Vlads question - he says we had primitive computers and 
> landed on the moon. we have super ones now in our houses but what 
> advancement have we made?? Have we wasted the technology on games?
 
> I would say the following
 
> Human genome sequencing

Much of molecular biology now only advances as fast as the computational
resources to process the data. The actual "human genome" was finished
a few years earlier than originally expected due to increases in the
ability to processs the data. The current "next generation" sequencing,
which can do a complete human genome sequence in days, is now possible
mostly because of the increase in computation.
 
> Mobile Phone technology including smart phones 4G etc videos, 
> skype etc

Much of phone technology is due to the advances in transistors
(affordable GHz transistors at the appropriate power level),
which is related to computing. (Fast computers also need fast
transistors.)
 
> 3D TV and ultra high definition 4K TV. Also the redundancy of 
> the cathode-ray tube at last!
 
> 3D printers including printing using laser sintering for metals. 
> This is revolutionary and in future will revolutionise production 
> methods. The skill of the lathe operator may not be in so high 
> a demand.

I hadn't thought that it required that much computing, but it
doesn't hurt.
 
> Speech recognition is getting there nearly
 
> the MP3 revolution. Now we can store our entire collection in a 
> postage stamp almost.

A combination of increases in the density of memory chips, especially
flash memory, but also in the computational ability to do the
compression algorithms. 
 
> Special effects in films 
 
> The computer games industry makes as much revenue as the movie industry

The "computer games" we had in the 1970's were line oriented ASCII.
If screen oriented, the screen was updated once per turn.
 
> High resolution imaging medical devices ie cat scans and body 
> scanners etc

Well, it could have been done on older computers, though it would
have been more expensive and taken longer to process each one.
 
> So what needs doing in the next 10 years?

The one that you forgot is that much of the advance in computers has
been due to the advance in computers. The ability to design complicated
VLSI circuits, and simulate them before fabrication, is due to the
computational resources available. Each generation is fast enough
to design and simulate the next.

-- glen

>To answer Vlads question - he says we had primitive computers and landed
on the moon. we have super ones now in our houses but what advancement have
we made?? Have we wasted the technology on games?
>

Space travels main limitation is energy, not number crunching......	 

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On Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:05:15 -0800 (PST), gyansorova@gmail.com wrote:

>To answer Vlads question - he says we had primitive computers and landed on the moon. we have super ones now in our houses but what advancement have we made?? Have we wasted the technology on games?
>
>I would say the following
>
>Human genome sequencing
>
>Mobile Phone technology including smart phones 4G etc videos, skype etc
>
>3D TV and ultra high definition 4K TV. Also the redundancy of the cathode-ray tube at last!
>
>3D printers including printing using laser sintering for metals. This is revolutionary and in future will revolutionise production methods. The skill of the lathe operator may not be in so high a demand.
>
>Speech recognition is getting there nearly
>
>the MP3 revolution. Now we can store our entire collection in a postage stamp almost.
>
>Special effects in films 
>
>The computer games industry makes as much revenue as the movie industry
>
>High resolution imaging medical devices ie cat scans and body scanners etc
>
>So what needs doing in the next 10 years?

I've never been able to find the clip, so maybe I dreamt it, but I
recall George Jetson having a machine that picked him up out of bed,
still asleep, and put him on a conveyer belt where he went through a
machine that showered, shaved, and dressed him and he came out the
other end still asleep.

I need that machine.  Nobody has invented it yet.

One of the things that impresses me these days, and it's close to
Glenn's point, is that the software tools available for engineering
are getting really powerful, and the best part is that many of them
are available for free.

I'm thinking of anything from FSF or similar projects, including
Octave.   There are also commercial sources, like Xilinx' WebPack,
which has a complete, mature, state-of-the-art HDL development,
synthesizer, and simulator, for free.    This puts a lot of
development power in the hands of the willing.

Last spring I was a judge at the International Science and Engineering
Fair, where High School kids from all over the world present projects
that they've done.   Many schools get academic licenses for things
like SolidWorks (3D CAD design), and get 3D printers for cheap or
donated to them.  Arduinos are well within reach and the development
capabilities of high-schoolers (again, FREE development tools!), and
it was very impressive what kids can put together and get working.
Seriously, there was some very, very cool stuff, done with free/cheap
tools and developed to a quality prototype level in a low-budget
garage environment.

Much of that is enabled by having lots of processing power, cheap,
easy-to-use development tools that use that processing power, and
motivated, curious practitioners.

In this forum we often decry how Matlab/Simulink dumbs down the DSP
design process, but it also enables things like this.   It's just
another two-edged sword.   There'll always be a need for the expertise
to take it that last 5% or to develop and maintain the tools.


Eric Jacobsen
Anchor Hill Communications
http://www.anchorhill.com

Eric Jacobsen wrote:
> [snip]
>
> I've never been able to find the clip, so maybe I dreamt it, but I
> recall George Jetson having a machine that picked him up out of bed,
> still asleep, and put him on a conveyer belt where he went through a
> machine that showered, shaved, and dressed him and he came out the
> other end still asleep.
>


That sounds like the leadin to all the episodes for at least one 
season.

On Fri, 20 Dec 2013 13:37:45 -0600, Richard Owlett
<rowlett@pcnetinc.com> wrote:

>Eric Jacobsen wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>> I've never been able to find the clip, so maybe I dreamt it, but I
>> recall George Jetson having a machine that picked him up out of bed,
>> still asleep, and put him on a conveyer belt where he went through a
>> machine that showered, shaved, and dressed him and he came out the
>> other end still asleep.
>>
>
>
>That sounds like the leadin to all the episodes for at least one 
>season.

That was how I remembered it, but I've never been able to find a clip.



Eric Jacobsen
Anchor Hill Communications
http://www.anchorhill.com

jacobfenton <51114@dsprelated> wrote:
>>To answer Vlads question - he says we had primitive computers and landed
> on the moon. we have super ones now in our houses but what 
> advancement have we made?? Have we wasted the technology on games?
 
> Space travels main limitation is energy, not number crunching......      

The back-up computer for the moon landing was an HP programmable
calculator. Though in the end, Neil Armstrong did the actual landing
by eye, while watching the fuel, and landed just before running out.

It does take some computation to find the optimal (in fuel use)
trajectory, but not so much to get close to optimal.

-- glen

Eric Jacobsen <eric.jacobsen@ieee.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:05:15 -0800 (PST), gyansorova@gmail.com wrote:
 
(snip)

>>The computer games industry makes as much revenue as the movie industry
>>High resolution imaging medical devices ie cat scans and body scanners etc
>>So what needs doing in the next 10 years?
 
> I've never been able to find the clip, so maybe I dreamt it, but I
> recall George Jetson having a machine that picked him up out of bed,
> still asleep, and put him on a conveyer belt where he went through a
> machine that showered, shaved, and dressed him and he came out the
> other end still asleep.

Having not watched the show since I was a little kid, I believe
it is from the opening credits.
 
> I need that machine.  Nobody has invented it yet.
 
> One of the things that impresses me these days, and it's close to
> Glenn's point, is that the software tools available for engineering
> are getting really powerful, and the best part is that many of them
> are available for free.
 
> I'm thinking of anything from FSF or similar projects, including
> Octave.   There are also commercial sources, like Xilinx' WebPack,
> which has a complete, mature, state-of-the-art HDL development,
> synthesizer, and simulator, for free.    This puts a lot of
> development power in the hands of the willing.

Some years ago (before the free FPGA tools) I was at an FCCM meeting
(FPGAs for Custom Computing Machines) and was thinking about when
I was in high school and college, when we had TTL gates to play with,
design logic with, and build things. Figuring that TTL would go away,
what was needed was FPGA software affordable and usable by high school
kids. 

As I understand it, though, it was the competition between Brand A
and Brand X that led to the free tools, but I won't complain.
 
> Last spring I was a judge at the International Science and Engineering
> Fair, where High School kids from all over the world present projects
> that they've done.   Many schools get academic licenses for things
> like SolidWorks (3D CAD design), and get 3D printers for cheap or
> donated to them.  Arduinos are well within reach and the development
> capabilities of high-schoolers (again, FREE development tools!), and
> it was very impressive what kids can put together and get working.
> Seriously, there was some very, very cool stuff, done with free/cheap
> tools and developed to a quality prototype level in a low-budget
> garage environment.
 
> Much of that is enabled by having lots of processing power, cheap,
> easy-to-use development tools that use that processing power, and
> motivated, curious practitioners.
 
> In this forum we often decry how Matlab/Simulink dumbs down the DSP
> design process, but it also enables things like this.   It's just
> another two-edged sword.   There'll always be a need for the expertise
> to take it that last 5% or to develop and maintain the tools.

Two-edge sword reminds me of the increased use of calculators in high
school math classes. At some point, I wonder about the decrease in
teaching the analytical methods that we learned some years ago, but
there is an increase in teaching of numerical methods. 

Problems such as numerical solutions to differential equations used to
require big computers and expensive plotters (to see the results) can
now be done on graphing calculators.  Even the SAT now requires (so
they say) a graphing calculator. (Interestingly the list of allowed
calculators goes back to the HP 28C from the late 1980's, which I have
one of but probably not many high school kids.)

-- glen

On 20/12/13 17:50, Eric Jacobsen wrote:
> In this forum we often decry how Matlab/Simulink dumbs down the DSP
> design process, but it also enables things like this.   It's just
> another two-edged sword.   There'll always be a need for the expertise
> to take it that last 5% or to develop and maintain the tools.

Some of the Greek philosophers decried the invention of writing.
They believed it would be detrimental since the written
word meant it would no longer be necessary to understand/remember
everything.

In my opinion they were correct.

But they also completely missed the point.

Same with calculators, when I was a kid.

digital CMOS.	 

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