From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Sat Dec 16 2000 - 10:53:30 MST
Some unmarshalled thoughts on the subject:
I think the success of the (Pilot|Palm|Visor) and cellphone is
instructive.
PDAs of choice have useful battery lives measured in (several) weeks.
Cellphones? Days, at least. In both cases, the things they talk to have
"don't worry about it" power requirements.
And 2000 is like 1900 in that now is the equivalent of the day of the
handcranked automobile with regard to ubiquitous computing. Once you try
to drive out of town, you find out you'd better know a farmer with a
mule.
Contrariwise, when (someday) my cufflinks/cuff buttons are doing voice
recognition for me and passing it along via Bluetooth (or whatever), I'd
better know that laundering my shirt (or whatever) imparts enough energy
to make them go. Ubiquity should imply low perceived effort.
The Athlon, much as I like AMD, is/was kind of a step headed in the
wrong direction.
How ubiquitous are insects and arachnids? What are their salient
characteristics?
Simple functions. Rugged architecture. Low, "bursty" power requirements:
think "spider". Mature, reliable code. And of course, self-reproducing
(uh oh) as part of an ecology.
Scratch the first half of the last one for all the appropriate "gray
goo" reasons, and we're left with one more comparison between PDAs and
phones: bandwidth has its price as surely as a classic muscle car gulps
gas. How much do you really need? Think Prius (hybrid car).
The CPU/System clock speed arms race can't be the only game in town.
Consumers are noticing this. What the hell do I need a 1 GHz CPU clock
for when I'm still connecting with a 56K modem? Even if I had T1, how
much would such a CPU help?
Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> "Michael M. Butler" <butler@comp-lib.org> writes:
>
> > ...an article about how evil wicked opportunistic power scalpers are
> > charging huge spot market prices for peak power, mentions near the end
> > that the California power crisis is in part due to the claimed fact that
> > a web hosting site can use ten times as much power as a normal business
> > office building.
> >
> > Meanwhile, pundits have been pooh-poohing TransMeta's Crusoe processor,
> > which was designed to run Intel code and sip power.
>
> I'm having a discussion here with my friends on the power needs of a
> really wired society. So what does the list think about the likely
> power needs when everybody got their own wearable/smart cellphone on
> all the time, ubiquitious computing is in every corner, wireless
> internet in the air and bluetooth (or similar) devices everywhere?
>
> It seems that to a first approximation everything would need sizeable
> power, but on the other hand since we don't want to switch batteries
> in every gizmo all the time powersaving is going to be a big thing
> (not to mention limiting heating). On the third hand, sending things
> wireless means that we will dissipate energy into the ether. On the
> fourth hand more virtual communications *may* lessen the need for
> physical transports - but then again, remember the "paperless office".
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
> asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
> GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:32:25 MST