Sublime Tech

I'm sitting here listening to the Alan Parsons Project's 1977 classic "I, Robot". Only recently did I obtain another copy of this album, my first CD copy in fact. The last time I listened to it prior was sometime in 1998. I always associated this album with not just its science fiction theme, but with the future in general. It's funny that for seven years it was no longer in my life.
As I listen to it, I find myself thinking about how pervasive technology has become in our lives now. After all, here I am typing this in WordPad on a Windows XP machine (I prefer Macintosh, but that's another story), something that most of us see as common place. Not everybody has computers, though, and they think somehow that they have managed to avoid the"blight" of technology.
Think again.
Since the digital genie was released from its bottle, it has entered almost every aspect of our lives in one form or another. To think that we can do without it now is to be misleading. Even if we don't own any new technology and choose to live as the Amish do, the effects of technology are always there. Imagine where we would be in a world without technology... that's actually difficult. Whenever we do anything, newer technology is there.
Computers making calculations regarding weather patterns for months in advance, helping farmers know what to expect. Wristwatches with alarms and multiple settings. Televisions that are capable of disallowing certain programs from being viewed. Even if you completely shun computers and choose to live a life that resembles the 1970's, you will not escape tech. For whenever you listen to the radio, hoping to catch that ever elusive Pink Floyd song, you can bet that the station is not using an old analog tape copy, but a CD.
Ultimately, the best kind of technology is the type that sits in the background, or better, the underground, not making us aware of its presence. In-your-face technology isn't really the way to go for most of the masses. Like digital Morlocks, these technologies hide from plain site.
But let's not allow those same digital Morlocks to devour us. Technology is best when it is sublime.

An Odd Victory - The Triumph of X86 Architecture

It was the news that everyone dreaded. Apple announced on 6th June 2005 that, by the end of 2006, the company will have transitioned to Intel x86 chips. What happened?
Steve Jobs is known to be a bit moody. His company has been held hostage by the makers of his CPU's. This is the very heart and brain of the computer. First Motorola and then IBM failed to deliver the promised improvements in the chip design. Speed was never really gained, and it appeared as if all PowerPC development has stalled. Meanwhile, the folks at Intel have been steadily moving along with the x86 series chips, most recently the Pentium 4. Speed has been steadily increasing to the point where the 3 gigahertz barrier was passed with ease. This from what is still essentially a 32-bit chip.
The biggest advantage to be gained in CPU development is market share. The more market share you have, the higher your profits and the more money you can drop into R&D. That is exactly what Intel did. They weren't very interested in radical improvements to the architecture. They were more interested in speed and capacity. That philosophy is exactly the reason that the 3 GH speed barrier was broken; don't do anything radical, just keep finding ways to milk out more speed. In the end, this approach has been wildly successful.
IBM, on the other hand, simply didn't sell enough PPC processors to Apple. That has to be the bottom line. The money wasn't there for R&D. Forget all of the promises. They failed to deliver. Besides, IBM will not miss the departure of Apple. They have more than enough business from the growing game computer market, which will far outsell anything Apple can sell.
The move to Intel will, hopefully, be a smooth one. Jobs & company plan on a full year to implement the changes, and during the initial run-up, there will be a new form of "fat" binaries, software that will work on both the PPC and x86 architecture. There are other advantages to be had by the move to Intel, such as the much rumored Mac Tablet; surely, such a beastie will use something along the lines of a Centrino processor.
Still, the transition is a sad one. PowerPC held so much potential. Instead, the spoils of the CPU war go to the old soldier, the one that can trace its lineage back almost directly to the first 8-bit processors. Sometimes, old soldiers don't die. Sometimes, they win.