A BOLD AND FOOLISH EFFORT TO PREDICT THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING
What today's prophets of technology say about the day after tomorrow
By Ed Regis

Atenção: Para respondePREDICTING WHAT NEXT YEAR'S (OR NEXT WEEK'S) IPAD IS GOING to be like is hard enough. Knowing what computers in general will be like 150 years from now - an eternity in technology development - is ...[A]... . On the other hand, technology prophets, computer pioneers and researchers have never been known for their reticence on the subject of the future. So we thought it wouldn't hurt to ask them. For starters, will there even be computers in the far future? "There will definitely be computers, " says nanotechnology oracle Eric Drexler of the University of Oxford. "They're more fundamental than the wheel."
Atenção: Para respondeGeorge Dyson, author of books about computers and global intelligence, says, "I can't tell you a lot about computing 50, 100 and 150 years ago but really nothing about computing 50, 100 or 150 years in the future. It's just truly impossible to predict: all I can guarantee is that any prediction will be wrong!" He then relents and makes one: "In 150 years most of the important computation will be analog computation (for the same reason that most of the important numbers are real numbers but not integers) and the notion of alldigital computation will be a quaint relic."
Atenção: Para respondeIvan Sutherland, who invented Sketchpad, the basis for today's ubiquitous graphical user interface says, "I have no clue about the state of the world 150 years from now. If you want to know the future, ask the young people who will create it."

(Disponível em: Magazine Scientific American. janeiro de 2013. v.308. p.30, Adaptado)