Fathoming how much computers have changed human society today requires a look a history where things have become so much more advanced now than just 60 years ago. Storing data on HDD or SSD about 20 years ago cost 20 thousand times more than today, just pennies per gigabyte lately with 8TB hard drives & even cheaper on bulk storage tape drives to archive data, while using lasers to engrave quartz can provide long term data integrity at a price premium & still niche in terms of low volume hardware for laser engraving quartz cubes with big data not exactly a diffused or widespread or widely available technology, not something you can buy on Amazon.com or Ebay or Alibaba
Big Data, Cloud Computing a Data Centers, large commercial buildings with lots of diesel storage for backup power generators, huge power connections since all the servers & chilling equipment suck down megawatts of electricity converted to heat & data movement. If you see a weird commercial building with lots of HVAC chillers on the roof, that is probably a data center. Sometimes they build data centers into the basements of other buildings, usually expensive high-rise buildings, or skyscrapers. Spotting vast amounts of HVAC on top of a building to locate data centers akin to measuring how much sulfuric acid an economy consumes to measure its size. They are both analytical exercises.
Your brain can do any of an almost unlimited number of things & computers are similarly a versatile information tool, where any kind of software can do almost anything people can conceptualized with python programming for example a way of writing software like ideas that runs on computer hardware like human brains. Many kinds of comparisons can be made between the human as an intelligent agent & computers that have AGI in the future, but many comparisons between computers & people have already been made throughout history, since it's the inner magic of human minds connected that enable computers to exist, reflected in both the software code & hardware, where an LLM might seem like GROK magic made of fast language statistics with bot crawler web scanning for supporting evidence, sort of like a digital sidekick when using X if you ask Grok about your posts. LLM only simulate intelligence & do not understand anything like human or AGI sentient machines of the future.
People told me as a kid that they would be reading about me in the future, which makes me laugh because I have published more than 1500 blog posting & vastly more posts on X & Facebook back then & myspace before that, plus I publish YouTube videos & have a premium YouTube subscription for ad free viewing.
When your brain using a computer, it takes data from your eyes & too & from your fingers or voice, then the digital machines with LLM like Siri or Alexa or Ok Google listen for the wake word, when you say it, the wake word, these Voice Assistants allow all sorts of computer functions to be accessed with your natural language with ongoing support for more languages forthcoming or getting better now.
Some pundits make fun of Windows from Microsoft & chips from Intel calling some PC's Wintel suggesting that Intel & Microsoft made weird deals to dominate the PC market & take it from IBM or Hewlett-Packard, while Apple makes iMac & Mac Pro + Mac Book & Mac Book Pro & even their own silicon designs like A18 in iPhone 16 Plus or M2 in Meg's Mac Book Air or my Mac Book Pro. This 2014 Acer Aspire runs 35 watt Intel Core i5 chip with Iris graphics that are totally ok, while a heat pipe & finned heatsink pass chip heat into copper so the cooling fan can blow air to such chip heat away & blow it into the room, some gaming laptops with 200 watt power supplies can pump out warm air fast enough to act like a personal space heater during winter for example.
My Asus F17 gaming laptop from 2020 has beefy heat sinks & dual blow fan setup with dustless fan tech & giant screen, its not portable like the MacBook but it sports NVIDIA discrete 1650 GPU to pump CS2 on Steam with enough gusto for smooth gaming action, where this older Acer can't handle CS2 very well by comparison. Business laptops are usually power efficient with good battery life while gaming laptops offer desktop class performance in smaller packages that are also more energy efficient than a gaming desktop.
We have been using iMac's since 2015, the latest were purchased on sale off cycle at Costco. I use my last intel iMac as the head unit for the Xtool laser engraver & for our Prusa Mini 3D FDM filament printer, and with our older Brother B&W laser printer, and sometimes to make YouTube videos with content in iMovie taken over a cable from my iPhone 14 or SE2 previously.
Schools even in Middle School, especially during COVID19, requires children to have online access & caused a huge chip shortages as many people had to work from home over internet & a computer, while esports & gaming have become more profitable than every other form of media, more than all of TV & all movies combined with newspaper & magazines & book sales, its gaming that caused most GPU technology to advance, while the fastest HBM memory now used for artificial intelligence simulations & AI training models for LLM & other emerging AI projects & products & services, like Apple Intelligence on iPhone 16 that combines all sorts of fun features into the camera, so you can read signs & menus in your local language when traveling abroad without even launching the Translate App. Social media crushing legacy media companies.
Did you know that News Papers were made using UNIX computers with graphics processing & internet as far back as the 1960's, then laser engraved onto nickel alloy sheets for high volume offset web mass printing technology, proving that with deep pockets advanced technology available much earlier in history before cost optimization and mass production of the same or similar. Consider the NASA curiosity rover on Mars vs products from Blue Origin or SpaceX that are similar, but how these private aerospace companies are more nimble & cost efficient than NASA a bloated government funding debacle agency that is able to produce amazing technology without worrying about profitability, such that when satellite batteries are made they cost more than a new luxury car, the satellite batteries can be $100,000 as a power storage system for space satellites that cost hundreds of millions. Some poor counties have entire economies worth less in terms of market capitalization than the GPS satellite fleet that provides satellite navigations functions to automobiles, & many other devices or COTS.
I was working retail when I encountered a billionaire who told me she had a flat screen installed at the foot of her bed in 1964 that was custom made by Phillips for $60 million, that they later commercialized and mass produced, launching for $45K at first, then down to $5K before TFT LCD LED TV with greater brighter & much greater power efficiency enabled smart TV to push plasma TV into the realms of VFD & Nixie Tubes or Low Pressure Sodium Vapor Lamps, exceptional legacy technology, that only the latest Samsung Super AMOLED Ultra Plus Premium OLED on smartphones bests in terms of color quality, true black higher contrast & vivid colors & fast switching or refresh rate like 240 hertz for buttery smooth scrolling on the latest Samsung Galaxy model or iPhones with the same technology.
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