I get the point being made, and it makes sense, however the ending begins to sound a lot like the “640k is enough” (that wasn’t actually said) but was used by a lot of people for their incredulity of how much more progress could there be, or be necessary. It also reminds me of an old Popular Science article of the 50s that tried to imagine how life would be in 2000. They got a lot of the technical things close, which is sort of what this post is trying to suggest, that we can imagine what’s technically possible for science. But they got a lot of the social aspects of how things could be used wrong or totally didn’t see it, as the necessity of use changes.
If they’re just keeping the suggestion of categories of software very broad, then I suppose new needs could be pushed under existing headings, but I think they’re reaching to say more that everything we might need in the future already has a category with something there, and anything else isn’t a need.
I get the point being made, and it makes sense, however the ending begins to sound a lot like the “640k is enough” (that wasn’t actually said) but was used by a lot of people for their incredulity of how much more progress could there be, or be necessary. It also reminds me of an old Popular Science article of the 50s that tried to imagine how life would be in 2000. They got a lot of the technical things close, which is sort of what this post is trying to suggest, that we can imagine what’s technically possible for science. But they got a lot of the social aspects of how things could be used wrong or totally didn’t see it, as the necessity of use changes.
If they’re just keeping the suggestion of categories of software very broad, then I suppose new needs could be pushed under existing headings, but I think they’re reaching to say more that everything we might need in the future already has a category with something there, and anything else isn’t a need.