Why not build a 50 terabyte hard drive now? why not make dvd burners burn at 52x now? why not have 20 gigs of RAM? why not have 10ghz processors now? Why do digital cameras keep progressing by 1 megapixel? These things will all exist eventually, why do we take baby steps to get there? Can it really be that these things arent possible yet? What makes technology move so slowly?
2006-12-21 18:57:58 · 9 answers · asked by memphis0013 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Other - Computers
Erm... the rate of technological advance has been accelerating exponentially for decades if not centuries.
My grandmother was born before the telephone was in wide use, when ice boxes contained blocks of ice, when horse and carriage were the normal means of transportation aside from railroads and ships...
Some sixty years later flight had advanced to the point of landing men on the moon. And today, we have a pair of 2 year old rovers wandering Mars... plus other probes in orbit around even more distant planets.
As far as your question about 50 terabyte hard drives... advances in hard drive technology have been incremental of late - but invariably the 'ultimate' limit has been overcome... and consider that 20 years ago a 10 megabyte hard drive sized to fit in a personal computer was considered awesome (I know I had one...)
So lets look at that... 10 megabytes is 10,000,000 bytes of data.
Today we have 400 megabyte drives that are half the size or less than that 10 megabyte drive. So we're now packing 400,000,000 bytes of data in less than half the space... an 80 fold increase in data storage in just 20 years...
Advances are incremental and will continue to be... but progress is certainly occurring at a rapid rate... fifty years ago all computers were analog - 35 years ago all computers were mainframes or kit computers. The personal computer didn't come into existence until 25 years ago.
And back then, a great system had 64 kilobytes of RAM. Today its relatively easy to get a system to 4 gigabytes... or even 16...
So from 64,000 bytes of RAM to 4,000,000,000 in just twenty five years...
In advancing technology - there are limits that need to be overcome, and these limits require ingenuity, they don't simply pop out of peoples A**'s.
Oh and in regards to GHz for processors - even Intel has finally admitted that raw clock cycles was a marketing ploy - going above about 4GHz is essentially impossible without using water cooling at a minimum, liquid nitrogen even better - but no so easy for the home environment. The innovations have come in creating multiple core processors, and wider data paths...
And for cameras - adding megapixels above 4 to 6 mp is pretty much another marketing ploy - 4 mp is enough to generate a poster size picture with magazine quality...
So - In my opinion, were pretty much booking along technologically speaking...
-dh
2006-12-21 19:17:15 · answer #1 · answered by delicateharmony 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Calculate how much you'd have to pay for those. They exist where it makes sense - science labs, NASA, etc. Plus that's no progress, that's just more of the same. Nanotechnology is the REAL future, but you obviously don't know enough about the very fast progress of technology to be aware of that. Remember that 20 years ago there was no Internet in the current form; 10 years ago there was no iPod (or any mp3 players at all). Now, if you are 14, as it appears from your question, that may look like an eternity to you.
2006-12-21 19:02:58 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The cost to consumer interest ratio... What mr Joe Bloggs could use 50 terrabytes of HDD space? 20GB of RAM is just stupid, as anything more than 1gb won't even be noticable these days. Why would you pay 3-4x as much for additional features you dont really need? Video games for example are all slowly progressing too, you cannot suddenly say "We'll give you 3x the technological power (while spending 5x the average cost), make a game that's graphics, gameplay and features that are 3x better than we've ever seen before." It won't happen overnight buddy, things progress step by step.
2006-12-21 19:03:36 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
the guy who commented first is the single that is outwardly no longer questioning issues by way of :P To you preliminary question, i might say technologies now could be relatively going tremendously quickly. evaluate the recent google wave and different ipods popping out (iring, ibangle, istick, hipod). in spite of the shown fact that, particular now and back i've got faith that persons are utilising technologies interior the incorrect way, which will result/ is already ensuing in our society's downward spiral (I say this through fact of a few people's morals in recent times...yet you have the the suitable option to disagree). I additionally think of that regularly there is basically "ineffective" technologies that don't help people in any way. persons are lazy presently, and that they only depend upon technologies. Lol, basically seem at what happens whilst people don't have electrical energy/ city blackouts xD
2016-10-15 10:25:59 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Too expensive to create. And to tell you the truth....the human race is expanding with its technology way too fast for what we can handle, even if it does seem to be going slow.
2006-12-21 19:00:41 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
no not really, they already have those kind of technology but they need to finalize.. like in the military they make high tech bombers and tanks and jets.. and they show it to people like 15 years later...
2006-12-21 19:03:34 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You stuid! these things can be made and brought to the market.
but no one has got enough money to buy them.
2006-12-21 19:03:14 · answer #7 · answered by Pranay 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think you just answered your own question.
2006-12-21 19:09:00 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
economics, and demand.
2006-12-21 19:00:50 · answer #9 · answered by shadycaliber 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋