computers :: essays research papers

Olu Taju-Deen Jr. 12/2/04 Professor Jones Research Paper Computers are already giving people today access to large amounts of information. This is increasing our brain power, like a hot air balloon it increases our brain power. As computers become more powerful they will grow more intelligent. Some people think that someday computer and machines will be smarter than people. In 5 to 20 years there seems no reason why machines should not become more intelligent than people in the future. Scientists believe computers will start to design and build other computers. They will then be able to evolve more like life evolves. There will then be two forms of life. Many thousands of years in the future there might be competition for power between computers and life. Computers certainly have many advantages over life. They can process large amounts of information quickly. They can be switched off for years, then start to work perfectly when they are switched back on. They come in handy for traveling over long distances. Computers can even be made very small, and control tiny machines which work together in networks to find equations for big problems. The computers of the future are expected to be smaller, faster and smarter. For the past twenty years, CPU performance has doubled about every eighteen months. The storage capacities of hard drives will continue to expand, they are currently growing at a rate of about sixty percent per year. Today, Intel's Pentium II has 7.5 million transistors. If the trend continues, Intel processors should contain fifty million to one hundred million transistors in the first decade of the next century. In five years, computers will have sixteen times the memory capacity they do now. "One big challenge is the time for the processor to access the memory. Bill Gates solution is the processor might be on the same chip as memory. Every time you buy memory, you get a processor." Actual voice input will become a reality, but it may not be widely employed in offices because of privacy and environmental issues. According to Bill Gates, he predicts that within ten years, "every computer will have speech and linguistics built into it†. Instead of typing or clicking, you'll tell your PC to launch this application or print that document. At the office, your e-mail message is just as likely to be a video clip. At home it probably means that your PC takes control of the lights, temperature, and appliances.