4 ms·

To what extent do we need computers? They feel indispensable but we could go back to more labor intensive information systems. And that wouldnt be all bad.

dragonmost 4y ago
We need chips in everything. Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Lots of very important medical devices rely on chips or full computers. I would like to see the media industry roll back to a lower tech leaving only the big and very bias information go through. Imagine how hard it would be to keep them accountable. Is it possible to live without computers? Yes, but you don't want to.
- viraptor 4y ago
  I feel like that's true, but the scale is misleading. We could run most of the things we need with very small chips production. A lot of usage could be removed (most of entertainment), lots of business use could be scaled down (how many businesses need basically a spreadsheet and a filing system equivalent). There will be special usage requiring hitech chips or course. But we can seriously scale down our electronics usage without a negative civilisation impact. The pocket device I write this on has enough power to run what an office of 10 people needs to properly run if we adjust the software to match.
  - sacrosancty 4y ago
    If processors were much more interchangeable than they are, we could scavenge chips from less important devices, or at least production that was destined for them, and put them in more important ones. I hope RISC-V can help provide this kind of buffer against short term shocks. For major civilizational collapse where we can't even build new fabs, then we probably won't have much need for new chips anyway, so it's moot.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Not as much as you think. Modern cars aren't a whole lot more efficient than and are just about as clean as they were 30 years ago. Most of the electronics in modern cars is for relatively useless stuff like lane keeping assist and that thing that makes the indicators blink in a cool pattern. You can have cars just as clean as modern ones with 1980s-level microcontrollers in the ECUs. You don't even really need catalytic converters, either, because the closed-loop fuelling systems that use a lambda sensor to measure how complete combustion is. We could rid cities of pollution right now, completely, by converting all the internal combustion engine vehicles to run on propane instead of petrol or diesel. This doesn't make finance companies or car companies any money, so it won't happen.
xyzzy123 4y ago
It's a good question, if we didn't have small microprocessors the alternatives would tend to be more material intensive (eg mechanical governors or clockwork) or be less efficient. We'd lose the Internet and cellphones, have to go back to mechanical telephone exchanges. I think we would miss CNC a lot, it's how the majority of production work gets done now in many industries, the manual machines are in the corner for one-offs. The computer controlled machines also tend to be making parts or doing QC or measurement to support the non computerised ones. So sure your injection moulder or die cutter might not need too many chips but wait until the molds and tooling wear out. Although who can send your factory orders anyway... Payments, payroll, inventory, invoicing. Small words but huge implications. We'd lose basically all capacity to print (billboards, t-shirts, books, office memos etc) , which seems bad. Like we had less digital ways to do all that stuff but they went away. It's not easy to go back. Medical imaging gone except for maybe the x-ray. Behind the scenes all kinds of process control would disappear which would require massive rework. We'd have to retool most industrial processes to get computers out of the control loops. We'd lose the electric grid until people figured out how to decomputerise it. Probably trains, traffic lights, airlines, cars, shipping would be impacted in a variety of fundamental ways. The postal service would need to be re-architected (current reliance on parcel sorters and scanners). We'd have to move back to analog tv, radio and media production workflows would change dramatically. It's an interesting exercise to try and figure out what industries would hurt the most if chips disappeared tomorrow, I'm pretty sure it would be a catastrophe but it's not easy to follow it all through.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Mechanical solutions tend to be slower and also less reliable (more moving parts = more points of failure) Aviation would just cease to function, nearly every commercial airliner is heavily dependent on computer control, to say nothing of things like the reservation systems that are also very complex (pricing flights is a very complex use case for algorithms)
  - kragen 4y ago
    Airplanes do predate computers, and there are plenty of airlines still flying that remain operable without electric power, even some commercial airliners.
arise 4y ago
Farmers use GPS and other technologies to plant crops with inch-level accuracy while maximizing land utilization and minimizing fuel/fertilizer. Take that away and somebody's going to starve (or start a war to keep from starving). This might play out in Africa soon with the collapse of Ukrainian grain imports.
- imtringued 4y ago
  And then they till the soil and let most of their money (fertilizer) run off (erosion).
retrac 4y ago
Something happened in the 1950s - 1960s economically. [1] It is really as remarkable in its own right, as the industrial revolution had been. The rate of economic growth, slow but steady since the industrial revolution, started to accelerate. It's impossible to really quantify this kind of thing, probably. And the causes were numerous (it's also an era of relative peace, for example). Still. I've always suspected much, maybe most of it, is due to to a mix of telecommunications, computer automation, and computer-based knowledge-amplification. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/GDP-per-capita-in-the-uk-since-1270.svg https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/GDP-per-capita-in...
- aldonius 4y ago
  The point you're making is more visible in log form: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-in-the-uk-since-1270?yScale=log https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-in-the-uk-...
jonjacky 4y ago
You don't need chips for computers. Until the mid-1960s no computers used chips. The early PDP-8 models (introduced beginning in 1965) were desktop minicomputers made entirely with discrete transistors and magnetic core memories. They were used in lots of automated process-control applications. There is some confusion in this question and many of the reponses here between any electronics (computation and control using tubes dates from WWII at least), transistors (which became widely available in the mid-1950s, all-transistor computers reached the market in 1959), small scale integrated circuits that contained (for example) several logic gates or a few flip-flops (which reached the market in the mid-late 1960s) which were used to build computers but also many simpler electronic control devices, and finally microprocessors which finally reached the market about 1975. Any electronics that reached the market before the mid or late 1970s did not use microprocessors. For example, the first commercial CT scanner used a Data General Nova minicomputer, which used small-scale integrated circuit logic gates, but did not use a microprocessor. The original Pong arcade game used around 60 small-scale integrated circuit logic gates, but no microprocessor. If we didn't have integrated circuits, but were stuck with 1959 discrete transistors, or we didn't have microprocessors, but were stuck with 1974 small-scale integrated circuits, we could still have a pretty hi-tech world. There would be more emphasis on optimized design of special-purpose devices - that original Pong game is an example.

dragonmost 4y ago

We need chips in everything. Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Lots of very important medical devices rely on chips or full computers. I would like to see the media industry roll back to a lower tech leaving only the big and very bias information go through. Imagine how hard it would be to keep them accountable. Is it possible to live without computers? Yes, but you don't want to.

viraptor 4y ago
I feel like that's true, but the scale is misleading. We could run most of the things we need with very small chips production. A lot of usage could be removed (most of entertainment), lots of business use could be scaled down (how many businesses need basically a spreadsheet and a filing system equivalent). There will be special usage requiring hitech chips or course. But we can seriously scale down our electronics usage without a negative civilisation impact. The pocket device I write this on has enough power to run what an office of 10 people needs to properly run if we adjust the software to match.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  If processors were much more interchangeable than they are, we could scavenge chips from less important devices, or at least production that was destined for them, and put them in more important ones. I hope RISC-V can help provide this kind of buffer against short term shocks. For major civilizational collapse where we can't even build new fabs, then we probably won't have much need for new chips anyway, so it's moot.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Not as much as you think. Modern cars aren't a whole lot more efficient than and are just about as clean as they were 30 years ago. Most of the electronics in modern cars is for relatively useless stuff like lane keeping assist and that thing that makes the indicators blink in a cool pattern. You can have cars just as clean as modern ones with 1980s-level microcontrollers in the ECUs. You don't even really need catalytic converters, either, because the closed-loop fuelling systems that use a lambda sensor to measure how complete combustion is. We could rid cities of pollution right now, completely, by converting all the internal combustion engine vehicles to run on propane instead of petrol or diesel. This doesn't make finance companies or car companies any money, so it won't happen.

xyzzy123 4y ago

It's a good question, if we didn't have small microprocessors the alternatives would tend to be more material intensive (eg mechanical governors or clockwork) or be less efficient. We'd lose the Internet and cellphones, have to go back to mechanical telephone exchanges. I think we would miss CNC a lot, it's how the majority of production work gets done now in many industries, the manual machines are in the corner for one-offs. The computer controlled machines also tend to be making parts or doing QC or measurement to support the non computerised ones. So sure your injection moulder or die cutter might not need too many chips but wait until the molds and tooling wear out. Although who can send your factory orders anyway... Payments, payroll, inventory, invoicing. Small words but huge implications. We'd lose basically all capacity to print (billboards, t-shirts, books, office memos etc) , which seems bad. Like we had less digital ways to do all that stuff but they went away. It's not easy to go back. Medical imaging gone except for maybe the x-ray. Behind the scenes all kinds of process control would disappear which would require massive rework. We'd have to retool most industrial processes to get computers out of the control loops. We'd lose the electric grid until people figured out how to decomputerise it. Probably trains, traffic lights, airlines, cars, shipping would be impacted in a variety of fundamental ways. The postal service would need to be re-architected (current reliance on parcel sorters and scanners). We'd have to move back to analog tv, radio and media production workflows would change dramatically. It's an interesting exercise to try and figure out what industries would hurt the most if chips disappeared tomorrow, I'm pretty sure it would be a catastrophe but it's not easy to follow it all through.

bobthepanda 4y ago
Mechanical solutions tend to be slower and also less reliable (more moving parts = more points of failure) Aviation would just cease to function, nearly every commercial airliner is heavily dependent on computer control, to say nothing of things like the reservation systems that are also very complex (pricing flights is a very complex use case for algorithms)
- kragen 4y ago
  Airplanes do predate computers, and there are plenty of airlines still flying that remain operable without electric power, even some commercial airliners.

arise 4y ago

Farmers use GPS and other technologies to plant crops with inch-level accuracy while maximizing land utilization and minimizing fuel/fertilizer. Take that away and somebody's going to starve (or start a war to keep from starving). This might play out in Africa soon with the collapse of Ukrainian grain imports.

imtringued 4y ago
And then they till the soil and let most of their money (fertilizer) run off (erosion).

retrac 4y ago

Something happened in the 1950s - 1960s economically. [1] It is really as remarkable in its own right, as the industrial revolution had been. The rate of economic growth, slow but steady since the industrial revolution, started to accelerate. It's impossible to really quantify this kind of thing, probably. And the causes were numerous (it's also an era of relative peace, for example). Still. I've always suspected much, maybe most of it, is due to to a mix of telecommunications, computer automation, and computer-based knowledge-amplification. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/GDP-per-capita-in-the-uk-since-1270.svg https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/GDP-per-capita-in...

aldonius 4y ago
The point you're making is more visible in log form: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-in-the-uk-since-1270?yScale=log https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-in-the-uk-...

jonjacky 4y ago

You don't need chips for computers. Until the mid-1960s no computers used chips. The early PDP-8 models (introduced beginning in 1965) were desktop minicomputers made entirely with discrete transistors and magnetic core memories. They were used in lots of automated process-control applications. There is some confusion in this question and many of the reponses here between any electronics (computation and control using tubes dates from WWII at least), transistors (which became widely available in the mid-1950s, all-transistor computers reached the market in 1959), small scale integrated circuits that contained (for example) several logic gates or a few flip-flops (which reached the market in the mid-late 1960s) which were used to build computers but also many simpler electronic control devices, and finally microprocessors which finally reached the market about 1975. Any electronics that reached the market before the mid or late 1970s did not use microprocessors. For example, the first commercial CT scanner used a Data General Nova minicomputer, which used small-scale integrated circuit logic gates, but did not use a microprocessor. The original Pong arcade game used around 60 small-scale integrated circuit logic gates, but no microprocessor. If we didn't have integrated circuits, but were stuck with 1959 discrete transistors, or we didn't have microprocessors, but were stuck with 1974 small-scale integrated circuits, we could still have a pretty hi-tech world. There would be more emphasis on optimized design of special-purpose devices - that original Pong game is an example.