Interesting comment about the petrochemical revolution here:
We’re living in the wake of the petrochemical revolution of 100 years ago. The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy—free mechanical energy, in this case. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt light bulb to run and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now? This revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution. We’re on the forefront.
---------
What I think is interesting is that the computer revolution is, and will continue to be, dependent on the petrochemical revolution.
We are in the process of finding out whether we can replace petrochemicals with renewables. If we can't, or only partially can, computing gets more expensive. This goes contrary to our expectations of more and cheaper computer, indefinitely.
We’re living in the wake of the petrochemical revolution of 100 years ago. The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy—free mechanical energy, in this case. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt light bulb to run and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now? This revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution. We’re on the forefront.
---------
What I think is interesting is that the computer revolution is, and will continue to be, dependent on the petrochemical revolution.
We are in the process of finding out whether we can replace petrochemicals with renewables. If we can't, or only partially can, computing gets more expensive. This goes contrary to our expectations of more and cheaper computer, indefinitely.