Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!vsi!sullivan
From: sullivan@vsi.UUCP (Michael T Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: What to do with all those MIPS
Message-ID: <564@vsi.UUCP>
Date: 19 Apr 88 19:49:03 GMT
References: <3b8a861f.44e6@apollo.uucp>
Organization: V-Systems, Inc. -- Santa Ana, CA
Lines: 24

In article <3b8a861f.44e6@apollo.uucp>, nelson_p@apollo.uucp writes:
> ...
>   Does anyone have any thoughts about whether (of if or when) huge leaps 
>   in compute resources might result in fundamentally *different* ways of
>   using computers?   We always used to worry about being 'disk-bound' or
>   'CPU-bound' or 'network-bound'.  Are we in any danger of becoming 
>   'imagination bound'?

This always happens when new technology gets not so new.  Brings to mind
the story of how Western Union could have been what AT&T is (or was before
the breakup).  Their response was "We're not in the phone business, we're
in the telegraph business."  When things start getting stale there is always
someone on the horizon with a new way of thinking, brought about because
he/she hasn't used the old way.

I think that parallel computers are going to bring about a big change in
our current way of thinking.  We are going to have to think of programs
that can be written taking advantage of parallellism (sp?), instead of
the current linear way of thinking.

-- 
Michael Sullivan		{uunet|attmail}!vsi!sullivan
				sullivan@vsi.com
HE V MTL