Our use of computing power is surprisingly inefficient.
Almost every individual in a first-world country simultaneously possesses two or three powerful microprocessors.
The one in your computer.
The other in your smart phone.
And the possible third in your second computer (laptop) or tablet.
Although all of these gadgets take on different forms, they essentially use the same form of technology: transistors in combination with a robust binary protocol.
Considering that we hardly ever use our devices to their fullest capacity, and that we hardly use two of these devices at the same time, a lot of these transistors are predominantly dormant.
You probably see what I'm getting at.
Imagine you ripped all of these CPUs out of their respective containers, and threw them into a combined contraption. Let's call it a "Computational Sphere".
In other words, imagine every person had all of that power in just one device. Then, picture a world where all of our computer peripherals (speakers, screens, mouses, printers, keyboards) use blue-tooth (or some other wireless protocol) to establish a stable connection for reliable use.
The sphere could connect to an ear-peace to make calls, to a screen to watch TV, to a smaller screen with touchscreen capabilities to have a tablet! Anything you can think of really...
Instead of having a bunch of different gadgets, you would only need one. That means that you only have one unit to charge, maintain and keep track of. And at the end of the day, we have fewer idle transistors lying around which could otherwise be processing information.
Weeee spheres everywhere :)
Illuminati
lol.nei
? :)
You would end up with even more inefficient system using very much processing power just for communication between devices.
Oh that's an interesting thought! It would be a different type of waste though...
The waste in my scenario takes place through the transfer of information.
The waste in our current situation takes place by not using available resources.
So in theory we would be better off tanking the inefficiencies at the start to ensure the most optimal situation for the distant future. Namely, the view above ;)
Thanks for sharing your thought!