Idle thoughts, on the fly

Wow, the sawbones dudes think they have found a gene that governs the length of time a human being can live. By changing our genes to baggies they will increase the human life expectancy from about 70 years to 120 to 180 years. If they can find a gene that causes old curmudgeons to remember to zip their fly, we will be in good shape.

The aircraft people are actually designing airplanes without using trial and error in a wind tunnel or do or die in a prototype. The wind tunnel was the Wright brothers’ real invention It let them live long enough to build an airplane they knew from wind tunnel tests would fly. We can predict the weather three days out with accuracy. We can lay out a circuit and predict the EMI with a degree of certainty – we don’t need to fix a prototype by trial and error.

There has been a quantum change increase in our capability in physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine and the other life sciences. Some of it is just the logarithmic curve – the more you know the easier it is to discover something new. But since 1980 it has been more than that.

There have been a few inventions that have changed our world dramatically. Language: we had a framework in which to think and could communicate with each other. Fire: we could burn the toast. Writing: we could record our ideas and each man didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. The wheel: we could roll blocks of stone into the desert and make pyramids. Boats: to keep our feet dry. The engine: this freed us from having to roll the blocks of stone by hand or by using mules. Electricity: shocking and let’s hope not the end of the sequence, atomic energy.

Starting in Bletchley Park in the late 1930s and bumping along at IBM and in California till about 1980 when the Trash 80 hit the market, thinking machines became universally available. This was an invention on a par with language and writing which will change our world in more profound ways than all the other inventions except language and writing because, like them, it changes our ability to think and therefore affected the invention process itself. It’s a machine that enabled us to think better just as the engine enabled us to work better. It is the computer.

At first all we did with the computer was make and break cryptograms. Then someone used it to control other machines (fire control on ships). It wasn’t until computers were available at Wal-Mart that ordinary folks could think outside the SCIF. Games, simulations, animated graphics and word processing are the computer’s real power. We probably don’t yet even know the half of its potential.

With a computer, a special game terminal, animated graphics where windows should be and proper feel in the controls you can learn to fly a helicopter by trial and error. It’s a bit embarrassing but not life threatening when you fly into the side of a mountain. And in case you think it doesn’t work, that is just the way they teach airline pilots to fly these days. They can learn to land with the engines turned off or in a thunderstorm downdraft without risking a plane, passengers or themselves.

Then there is simulation with snazzy graphics. You can see the EMI hot spots on and around a board, then move a clad or component and see what happens. You can see what happens to its radar cross-section as you change the geometry of an airplane. Or you can find out what happens to the conductivity of a substance when you move from one position on the carbon chain to another.

There was no way to determine and record the gene structure in the human genome without shuffling the data in a computer. The Internet allows everyone access to mountains of information. Anyone who spends the time can become an expert in fish of the Antarctic or recipes for plum pudding.

So, most of these recent giant steps in our knowledge and abilities are due to the use of computers. Those who call it the Information Revolution are missing the boat – there is so much more involved than information.