Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Memories of Things to Come

People, especially the older generation, seem to think of the Internet as a series of tubes. I mean, they think that the internet as something magical.

Probably the same way that their fathers thought that the television as a magic box.

It's crazy, isn't it? They hear about stuff happening on the Internet and they smile with this oafish grin on their face, and probably give some small shakes to the head.

The internet is NOT magic. And neither are hydrogen fuel-cells or flying cars. Or protein-based microprocessors. Or fiber-optic processors that uses photons (light particles) travelling through prisms instead of current through copper wires/semiconductors.

Web 2.0, and now web 3.0 is a scam. Just like 3G phones and 4G phones. What does 3G or 3.0 mean? Nothing. It's an attempt by marketeers to put a name and box the progress of technology.

In the near future, we shall see electric cars on Malaysian roads. The APs for hybrids are already out. And hybrids are just a stupid, expensive intermediate level before we go full electric. Or hydrogen.

And please welcome the advent of Malaysian nuclear energy as well. There is nowhere else to go. Oil will be precious for the manufacturing of polymers - used everywhere from the plastic industry to paint to coatings, which affect ALL products.

The future, my friends, will be one of cotton and glass. And natural rubber.

Well, at least condoms will be safe.

The world is going to starve soon. 9 billion people by as close as 2012. Or 2020. Who gives a shit? One day, we will be eating mushrooms and fungi harvested from old oil rigs.

Moisture farms will be set up in Singapore. They will buy our nuclear energy for a cheap price in order to de-salinize sea water. In fact, sea water could be hooked up to homes in order for them to do general cleaning. Special detergent sans salt will be sold in Singapore.

Newspapers will one day have to be printed from vending machines, or downloaded into your laptop or universal readers.

I tell my father all these things, and he's STILL enamoured with the TV. TV is nothing. A TV is just a cathode ray tube firing electrons at a screen. Or more recently information translated across liquid crystal displays.

The duo-core processor is just two processors in one. The same technology with server arrays. Or synchronised computing like the one done by geeks as early as 1995.

No idea is new. You know what STILL amazes ME? Bread. How did people, from seeing something that looks like stupid weed, can harvest wheat, grind it up, mix it with water, later yeast and leave it for the leavening process, then poke the air out, and then bake it to make a baguette.

That process has to be perfected over hundreds, if not thousands of years. The next jump in technology will be in the next few years. Already, I feel old and obsolete.

Pretty soon, I will be on my death bed, praying that the euthanasia clause in my insurance policy holds out.