The beginning of the end of Moore's law

I am getting old.

We have been adhering to Moore's law for the past forty years and it has taken us some pretty remarkable places.  Knowledge is now more widespread than in any time during history.  Large swathes of the populations in the developed world have access to amounts of knowledge that would stagger the folks at the Library of Alexandria.

The fact that most of the information appears to be mindless and vapid facebook entries and pornography is beside the point

But the above article is the beginning of the end of that rocket ship expansion of computing power.  Truth is, maybe it is a good thing.

Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away.  The too-rapid increase in computing power has allowed kludgey, crufty programs to sap away the abilities of the processors.  With an end to the endless increase in computing power, increases in speed and productivity will be batted firmly back into the software realm.  The fat laden crap that Microsoft and their ilk have been feeding us will have to be tightened up and made good.

It will also allow us to perhaps find a more balanced use of these beasts within our lives.  Currently, they are pretty new in the grand scheme of things.  I am a veritable dinosaur, having had an e-mail address back in the 80's (I doubt if it is still good, but I was quite pleased with janus@well.com), so the damn things really have only been around for about a generation.  No way we can have a decent handle on them at this point.

I kind of look forward to what they will become.  Perhaps something useful, that will allow us to see the shadows dancing on the side of the cave wall a little better.