This is a fantastic in-depth article about computers.
We show each of the three parts of the fragmentation cycle are already underway: there has been a dramatic and ever-growing slowdown in the improvement rate of universal processors; the economic trade-off between buying universal and specialized processors has shifted dramatically toward specialized processors; and the rising fixed costs of building ever-better processors can no longer be covered by market growth rates.
And it is just fine. Computers are amazingly resilient. My “main” machine is a 2012 mid-range laptop in which I immediately put a SSD in. It’s been working like a charm ever since, 16 hours a day. Buying a newer machine and gaining 1s on booting a browser is not progress. It’s being anal.
Computers are amazingly powerful and we use a tiny fraction of their power. The same 2012 laptop allows me to run 50 tracks and 27 subgroups in my audio software. That is huge. For comparison, most 60s and 70s music uses 16, maybe 32 tracks at the very best. It’s still wonderful music. We know quality isn’t tied to numbers per se.
Sure, I could probably run 200 tracks on a 2021 laptop but I don’t need it and probably never will. Computers already cover 99% of what we need them for. We don’t even need them to be smaller, they have been human-sized for a while now: they can fit in a tiny room, a tiny pocket. I would say, they need to become fanless and silent. It’s happening too.
The computer paradigm made us addicted to numbers, making us very excited when those numbers keep going up. But numbers are not everything, at all. We’re humans. We’re not numbers. Call of Duty needs more than 500 GB now but it’s still a FPS with most of its gameplay being exactly the same as a 500 MB –one order of magnitude smaller– Call of Duty game.
I can see myself buying older machines for the rest of my life. Like I buy old appliances on Etsy right now.