As someone who has worked on ADAS software and saw a simple un-optimized ML object detector beat a custom hardware solution at both speed and accuracy, I can honestly say machine learning is amazing.

Just in this domain alone, excluding the 100 other applications of ML, and the fact that we haven't even begun optimization in earnest, I certainly believe ML will change the direction of computing. It already has: look at where investment and research dollars have gone. (not to say that trends don't happen, but when I saw the performance results I thought: sh*t, this is big.)

Add to this the rise of the qubit, and the next 50 years are going to be even crazier than the last 50.

Yes, I am a proselytizer of school of James Gleick. "Faster" was a prophecy[1].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Faster-Acceleration-Just-About-Everyt...

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efferifickMay 2013

I love everything by James Gleick. I recommend Faster, The Information, and Chaos.

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vilyaNov 2010

James Gleick explores this theme in his very enjoyable book Faster, as part of a broader look at the accelerating pace of modern life.

For the interested, the book's website is at http://fasterbook.com/ and the chapter about door close buttons is here: http://fasterbook.com/cgi-bin/faster/fchapter.pl?3

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marcosscrivenJun 2013

This reminds me of a book back from the nineties called "Faster" by James Gleick. There was a chapter on lifts being the limit to building height, although I seem to recall it was more down to shaft space rather than cable strength.

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