3 ms·

Reminds me of... "Who needs faster CPU cycles?" and "Who needs that many pixels?" I'd suggest the question should be something like "What does the lifting o

Reminds me of... "Who needs faster CPU cycles?" and "Who needs that many pixels?" I'd suggest the question should be something like "What does the lifting of those constraints enable?" or "What businesses will this make possible?"

pessimizer 5y ago
That's just the same question phrased differently. I'd suggest that what we need are answers.
- erikerikson 5y ago
  It wasn't intended to be. The point is that in those circumstances when we were expanding the resources we had been accustomed to there were many people who said we'd never use them. Disk space is another. However, the commoditization of a resource or the elimination of its scarcity invites us to use the resource in a way that would have seemed wasteful previously and perhaps may have blocked certain use cases before. The games industry has been loved and subsidized for driving consumption of resources up to drive new hardware adoption. Another example of this is disk space where it's reduction in cost has driven changes in the industry. Think of NoSql and other shifts due to the reduction in cost of storage.
pg_bot 5y ago
Diminishing marginal utility is certainly a thing, and I would counter argue that the longer it takes for a technology to be transformative the less likely it is actually needed by society. At a certain point in time the answers to both of your questions are going to be "no one". Do you need a 32k resolution screen? Do you need a 8.4GHz processor? Maybe, maybe not. If you keep bumping the numbers up you will eventually see an imperceptible difference in performance that won't justify the costs to build it from the oems. The only real use case I've seen for 5G has been people live streaming themselves from a cell phone in major cities. That didn't seem possible before, but so far it's a small niche not something transformative. The only other use case I could think of was streaming live sports from people's cameras and making a digital television network out of that. However, I think you would likely get kicked out of every stadium in the US if it caught on as you would be undercutting the major source of revenue for most sports leagues.
- erikerikson 5y ago
  32K or higher resolution screens might allow for wall displays and interactions with subsets of the screen. What does that enable? I imagine things I cannot yet imagine. A remote dance party may feel less odd and people you are remotely meeting may seem more "there" if you can see them moving in the space. Intensive resolution might increase the realism of virtual stimuli. I don't know... there's no magic in my brain. The point was that many of us were previously unable to see what use an expansion of capacity would allow. This it seems reasonable enough to think we might have a crisis of imagination again.

pessimizer 5y ago

That's just the same question phrased differently. I'd suggest that what we need are answers.

erikerikson 5y ago
It wasn't intended to be. The point is that in those circumstances when we were expanding the resources we had been accustomed to there were many people who said we'd never use them. Disk space is another. However, the commoditization of a resource or the elimination of its scarcity invites us to use the resource in a way that would have seemed wasteful previously and perhaps may have blocked certain use cases before. The games industry has been loved and subsidized for driving consumption of resources up to drive new hardware adoption. Another example of this is disk space where it's reduction in cost has driven changes in the industry. Think of NoSql and other shifts due to the reduction in cost of storage.

pg_bot 5y ago

Diminishing marginal utility is certainly a thing, and I would counter argue that the longer it takes for a technology to be transformative the less likely it is actually needed by society. At a certain point in time the answers to both of your questions are going to be "no one". Do you need a 32k resolution screen? Do you need a 8.4GHz processor? Maybe, maybe not. If you keep bumping the numbers up you will eventually see an imperceptible difference in performance that won't justify the costs to build it from the oems. The only real use case I've seen for 5G has been people live streaming themselves from a cell phone in major cities. That didn't seem possible before, but so far it's a small niche not something transformative. The only other use case I could think of was streaming live sports from people's cameras and making a digital television network out of that. However, I think you would likely get kicked out of every stadium in the US if it caught on as you would be undercutting the major source of revenue for most sports leagues.

erikerikson 5y ago
32K or higher resolution screens might allow for wall displays and interactions with subsets of the screen. What does that enable? I imagine things I cannot yet imagine. A remote dance party may feel less odd and people you are remotely meeting may seem more "there" if you can see them moving in the space. Intensive resolution might increase the realism of virtual stimuli. I don't know... there's no magic in my brain. The point was that many of us were previously unable to see what use an expansion of capacity would allow. This it seems reasonable enough to think we might have a crisis of imagination again.