Is Moore's law Inevitable? (Alternate TL discussion)

[VariousRen]

If you wanted to keep our current level of computing technology it's entirely reasonable to say that no further breakthroughs in computation take place. We are actually quite close to the theoretical limit of how dense we can pack a circuit filled with transistors before quantum effects start playing absolute havoc with them. If quantum computing turns out to be a limited application thing, and optical computing turns out to be less efficient than electrical computing, Moore's law would fail pretty quickly.

If you wanted to explain why computing never advanced beyond TL7 I've got an idea that should leave almost everything else in the world intact, if minimal changes is what you're looking for. If quantum effects took place at a slightly longer range you might find that an integrated circuit produces too much random noise to be useful. This noise would be from electrons that "bleed" into other parts of the circuit via quantum tunneling, which is where the electrons are close enough to another viable place they could be that they jump over there, ignoring the fact that there isn't any way for them to actually get there.

That would result in a world where all of the macro properties are exactly the same, and there would be no divergent tech until the 1960s (when the first integrated circuits went into use). Room sized computers based on vacuum tubes would exist, but there could be no killing machines with human sizes computer-brains. "Different quantum laws" also makes good technobabble for other differences you want to have, as long as nobody wants to look too closely at it.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

If you wanted to explain why computing never advanced beyond TL7 I've got an idea that should leave almost everything else in the world intact, if minimal changes is what you're looking for.

I would avoid being specific. Anything you can name will have side effects, likely extending to "and as a result, life as we know it cannot exist in this universe". Just say they don't work.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

If quantum effects took place at a slightly longer range you might find that an integrated circuit produces too much random noise to be useful. This noise would be from electrons that "bleed" into other parts of the circuit via quantum tunneling, which is where the electrons are close enough to another viable place they could be that they jump over there, ignoring the fact that there isn't any way for them to actually get there.

That's really elegant, and can be adapted to support any level of computing that you like. If you want computers that take up big rooms, then the quantum tunneling prohibits almost all ICs. If you want more computing power, but not a lot more, then quantum tunneling prohibits sub-micron lithography, so the most powerful computer CPU is roughly equal to an Intel 80486. You can network them together and use better architectures, but computers take up a reasonable amount of space and aren't particularly fast.

Excellent bit of justification there.

[gruundehn]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

Ahhh, you're saying an alternate means to achieve the same. That reminds me of a setting that used animal brains as computational devices. I can't remember the name though.

A. Bertram Chandler in his Commodore Grimes series had telepaths use dog brains as amplifiers. Is that what you were thinking? Or was it THE SHIP WHO SANG (the author's names will not come to mind right now)?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by gruundehn

THE SHIP WHO SANG (the author's names will not come to mind right now)?

Anne McCaffrey.

[acrosome]

Well, Moore's Law is already breaking down. Intel announced it in 2015- the doubling time is getting longer. Realistically, silicone transistor density has to hit a limit at some point, so barring totally new technology like quantum circuits, etc. it must slow down.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

It seems to me that Moores Law is an inevitable result of the positive feedback loop that occurs when men build computers that are able to build computers better then men are able to build.

As others have noted on thread, no computer has ever yet built another computer. They are useful tools in building further computers, but in principle that is no different than bronze tools making it easier to advance to the iron age. People are still doing all the building and designing and so on. Someday that might change, but it's still the case right now.

Now being that I don't want no robots stealing my sci-fi murderhobo jobs we'd need to do something to provent this extraordinary rapid development in computing hardware.

Just what that is, I'm unsure. Perhaps the transistor was never developed? I'm not sure if vacuum tubes would of gone through the same steep rise in ability or not.

It's not that hard to prevent the IT explosion, honestly. It's as much a product of various social, economic, and cultural impetuses as it is technology as such.

One reason Moore's Law happened is that for various political and business reasons, governments and large corporate entities poured huge amounts of money and time into R&D work on the subject. Moore's Law may have made computing power cheaper, but that progression itself cost a whale of a lot of money and effort.

Turn the Cold War into somewhat different paths, or call the whole thing off in the 1940s, or turn it non-nuclear-hot in the 1950s, and it's quite possible that much of the IT explosion would never have happened even yet. There would still have been some progress, but probably not as much as in the real world.

Likewise, assuming that the social culture of the 1970s took a different direction, away from the ideal of personal autonomy, and much of the social impetus for the PC revolution goes away. PC-sized computers probably still happen, a little later, but they wouldn't necessary be PCs as we know them.

Also, if you want to keep current computer tech but avoid a Singularity or the other tech-fantasies, reality is your friend. We live under what is sometimes called the Tyranny of the 'S' Curve. Any new technology tends to advance slowly at first, then quickly, then really quickly...then it levels off as the possibilities of the tech are explored and various economic and technical limits are approached.

For ex, compare the performance increases of early automobiles in terms of speed, range, and so forth, and then extrapolate the curve naively to 2018 and see what you get. Or consider the performance gap between the Wright brothers' first planes and the early jet age, and then notice that the curve rapidly flattens after that.

Or compare a V-2 to a Saturn-5, and then note the shape of the curve after that.

Or the medical revolutions of the post WW II era, which leveled off just as the popularizers were starting to run on about the elimination of sickness in the near future.

The S-curve effect is nearly universal in technological development. Sometimes it's a technical limit that bends the curve down, sometimes it's an economic or practical limit that is reached before the technical limits, but it pretty much always happens.

Even as we speak, Moore's Law is showing signs of stalling out.

[DocRailgun]

"Dark Conspiracy" by Game Designers' Workshop had the Darktek that included computers with slices of human brains as processors.

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

Ahhh, you're saying an alternate means to achieve the same. That reminds me of a setting that used animal brains as computational devices. I can't remember the name though.