11 ms·

"Everyone gets a pocket supercomputer" - Slide 8 I see this idea repeated so often, but it's unfortunate that we don't also have the _value_ of a supercomputer

by haxel 11y ago

"Everyone gets a pocket supercomputer" - Slide 8 I see this idea repeated so often, but it's unfortunate that we don't also have the _value_ of a supercomputer in our pocket. The sole purpose of a supercomputer is to advance the interests of its owner, who has exclusive control over it. Whether the purpose is prediction, or simulation, or to advance the state of the art, the benefit goes to the owner. Yet we seem to have less and less control over our smart-phones. With so much information about each of us being siphoned off through the Internet, it's easy to wonder whose interest they serve. With all of the advances in computing power, you'd think we'd put a bit more imagination into capturing more value for each individual smart-phone user, and less into centralized capture and analysis of our digital activity.

deleted 11y ago
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sliverstorm 11y ago
What a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. This isn't some Marxist struggle between the owners of the means of production and the smartphoneliteriat. The reason we don't realize the value is because we haven't concocted applications. Supercomputers crunch data & perform math. That's what they are good at, and their value (as I know it) is primarily rooted in their ability to advance math & science (& defense, as it relates to math & science). But nobody has really figured out what sort of massive scientific computation we should be doing with our pocket computers. Some of it is there- for example, I wrote an app that performs geodetic math that was supercomputer-only in the 60's- but in general, folding proteins and simulating physics in your pocket is not useful to Joe Smartphone.
- mirimir 11y ago
  To the extent that smartphones are "supercomputers", they're mostly super at games and video. Otherwise they're more like dumb terminals than PCs.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    As used today, yes. And that's kind of the point of the original observation. Smartphones are not true supercomputers. But they still smoke a Cray-1, and yet we use them as dumb terminals. What can we use that power for, that filled a room twenty years ago? Their existing roles have value! But there is a sense of leaving something untapped, when you use them only as dumb terminals. A sense of, what am I missing?
    - brador 11y ago
      It doesn't make sense to have a supercomputer as your phone. In your phone you value excellent long battery life. Better to offload the supercomputer part to central processing and pipe down a "viewport". Economics always wins.
      - robotresearcher 11y ago
        But you already have the performance of a 1980s supercomputer in your phone. It doesn't have to make sense.
        s73v3r 11y ago
        But you have a limited power supply.
        mirimir 11y ago
        I can easily carry a power brick. Or a hydrogen fuel cell like they use for power tools.
        s73v3r 11y ago
        But most people either can't or don't want to.
      - e12e 11y ago
        "Phone" isn't really a term that makes sense for the future. It's just a somewhat anachronistic bundling of microphone/speaker/digital radio/battery (and the tiny bit of logic needed for that to work together). It does make sense to carry the things that comprise a "smart phone" (as above, +powerful cpu that can scale down to conserve power, gpu, screen/hud/display, camera(s), low-power local-area digital radio (eg: bluetooth), touchscreen (or drawing surface/digitizer), text-input (keyboard), gps, interface for connecting 4k+ display, possibly direct-attached storage), along with a headset, preferably wireless. I just don't see why this should all be forced into one unit. I'm not sure how much power miracast would require -- but could it really be more than what the led-lit touch-screen uses? Because surely it'd be easier to have big battery+wlan/miracast/bluetooth/cpu stuffed in your pocket, and a small display+touch+bluetooth device on your wrist, with the option to pull out a phablet-sized hi-res touch-screen with it's own battery, but only miracast+bluetooth (maybe a gpu)? The "smart stick" (the smarphone less the camera/screen/mic) could probably be made to fit more nicely in a pocket if there was no need for a display. Shape it like a rod, add a powerful vibrator and the thing would even be dual-use ;-) (seriously, though - if it's intended to be kept in a pocket, a vibrator might make sense, as well as a couple of status leds). The screen is going to be a bit clunky anyway (unless it folds/rolls up) - so no real issue to add a dedicated battery for it. Maybe I should file a patent for "smart rod".
- haxel 11y ago
  So information has no value? Why do we say that information is power? I suppose that idea could be just as wrong as saying we have a supercomputer in our pocket, but the idea that information is power is much, much older. Information isn't being hoovered up at the cost of billions of dollars without a very good reason for doing so. Still, it seems a matter imagination. If our personal computers have tremendous (and accelerating) power, there's few actual limits to where we can take them. The deck even has a slide that talks about pulling components off the shelf and playing lego with them. I think it's prudent to consider whether the average person is, all things considered, empowered by our Internet-connected computers. If so, great. If not, or not enough, then how?
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    You're trying to tie together unrelated ideas. Beneficial utilization of a phone's incredible raw computational muscle is basically unrelated to the harvesting of your personal data, in which the phone is merely acting as a networked array of sensors. There is virtually nothing stopping you from harnessing the full computational power of your phone supercomputer-style to do whatever data crunching you might imagine. The challenge is the imagining (and implementing)
    - haxel 11y ago
      I'm speaking of value, which I view as the balance of risk vs reward. Your view may differ. On one side, it seems to me that the reward or benefit we're receiving isn't anywhere near proportional to the power increases we've seen. On the other side, what are the risks of exposing so much personal information? Receiving information seems much more valuable than giving it. After all, information has a price. If giving is not so great, shouldn't we be a little concerned about the consequences of trading away so much of it? Information asymmetry strikes me as the root of many power imbalances. So, if we want more _value_ out of our "pocket supercomputers", it seems we have to consider the overall value proposition. Then perhaps we can figure out how to do better.
      - nostrademons 11y ago
- minthd 11y ago
  You don't have to take it as far as science. Previously ,Google had a web search engine that searched discussion groups - a great tool, and an important one from the democratic point of view. Now it's gone. Why ? One guess would be that no company wants to slap ads near a vibrant discussion - not a good place to sell lies. So in a sense this do fit the theme OP raised. BTW, with connectivity - the distinction between smartphone and server is little. Even weak phones have supercomputers at their disposal.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    One guess would be that no company wants to slap ads near a vibrant discussion - not a good place to sell lies. Really? Is there any large discussion forum that doesn't have ads? Reddit, SomethingAwful, they all make their income slapping ads near discussions.
    - minthd 11y ago
      reddit just proves the point , huge traffic , bad monetization.
    - minthd 11y ago
      reddit just proves the point , huge traffic , bad monetization.
  - navait 11y ago
    You can still search discussion google groups. They removed it because most people didn't want it.
- ozmbie 11y ago
  It's the idea that the content available on our devices is shaped by the economic framework that supports it. When the economic model is advertising and data tracking, the types of apps/services that are available are the ones that work best with advertising and data tracking. And it turns out that consumer-oriented social sharing services fit that model pretty well. So that's mostly what we have. Those services do have value. But I think it's limited. When I walk into a cafe with a beautiful view and everyone is on their phones, or when people awkwardly scroll through Twitter at a group event instead of enjoying the world around them or interacting with strangers....I dont see people gaining value. Especially when it's children doing it. I see compulsive addictive behaviour that erodes human value for the benefit of advertising companies.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    The economic model follows consumer desires, not vice versa. It's a lot easier for a startup to change their business model to fit what people will actually pay them money for than for them to convince people who aren't willing to pay to ante up. If people would pay for value, startups would spring up to capture that. That's actually what we see in the SaaS business. Consumer entertainment has always been a hard sell, which is why the radio and TV businesses were also ad-supported.
- mahranch 11y ago
  > The reason we don't realize the value is because we haven't concocted applications. Some of us realize the value. I just think it's impossible for most people to not take it for granted. If you're under 30, you inherently take it for granted because you know of nothing else, you simply cannot appreciate the technology as much as someone who lived a good chunk of their lives without it. You can "know" and imagine what life was like before our current internet culture, maybe even empathize, but there are still things that are unknowable and can't be experienced by just going off the grid. One such example is culture. The culture of society was different because of the technology (or lack of) at the time. Everything from how you interacted with your friends, to how you received and consumed media, to banking and your place of employment. Everything was different before our current technology. The people who grew up with supercomputers in their pockets don't know of a world where 3-way calling was something magical and you'd get giddy when you used it (or horrified when it was used as a tool to trick you into admitting you liked someone and they were on the phone silently listening). Or a world where if you wanted to find an address or phone number, you had to go find a phone book. Wanted to go on a vacation and look up cool places to see while there? You were heading to the library. If you were on the road driving, and wanted to call someone, you had to stop off and find a payphone (and pay a fortune if you were out of the area). Good luck if you blew a tire. But back then, more people were inclined to stop off and help because of this very problem. Again, society was very different back then. People take for granted the fact that you now have all the world's information and entertainment at your fingertips. I know because I take it for granted myself and I know what the world was like before our current technology. I'm in my late 30s. If I take it for granted from time to time, how can someone who never knew a life without internet & cell phones appreciate what they have? I know this sounds a bit preachy, and I didn't really mean for it to come across that way, but I find myself echoing Louis CK sentiment on technology and today's youth. His bit here really struck a chord with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E
mirimir 11y ago
So is anyone building such a smartphone? And if not, why? My guess is that it would cost too much, without the commodification of our private information. Just like the web.
- jbigelow76 11y ago
  >My guess is that it would cost too much, without the commodification of our private information. Ask and ye shall receive. Uber, the darling of both the mobile world and the "sharing" economy is set to start tracking your every location so they can serve up fucking ads[1]. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/uber-ftc-privacy-customer-location-contacts http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/uber-ftc-p...
  - bernardlunn 11y ago
    I will treasure my bicycle even more. I hear the birds singing, not some stupid jingle.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      I predict that bicycles will join the IoT. It will be a feature. Like some bastard child of OnStar and medical alert systems ;)
- haxel 11y ago
  What if our information stayed private and we used our "supercomputers" to do all sorts of data-mining, or AI, or data-science on it? Same stuff the big guys are doing, but for ourselves. Smaller, higher quality datasets. If our smartphones worked like this, and we'd benefit more from better information, then we'd also have a pretty good reason to develop advanced information-centric UIs and focus a bit more on security and trust.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    That would be wonderful. But I doubt that providers would ever bundle them. So most people would consider them to be too expensive. And so they would die, like Blackberry has.
SixSigma 11y ago
The people I know who program super computers do it to * simulate nuclear explosions * model the internet [1] [1] http://phys.org/news/2009-09-scientists-successfully-boot-million-linux.html http://phys.org/news/2009-09-scientists-successfully-boot-mi... Neither of which, nor similar activities, I need to do on the train.
- noja 11y ago
  Traditionally, supercomputers were used to do those things.
  - moconnor 11y ago
    Currently supercomputers are used to do these things, because you can't do them on a mobile phone or desktop. The "supercomputer in your pocket" discussion is somewhat disingenuous - an iPhone6 from 2014 wouldn't even have made the top 10 in 1993 over 20 years earlier. A million-fold increase in transistor density and it still wouldn't rank as a supercomputer. There are a lot of fascinating things you can do with more computing power, but it's not really clear that doing so on a power- and heat-constrained mobile device brings a competitive advantage in a highly-connected environment.
- haxel 11y ago
  Those examples benefit their owners, providing competitive advantage on a national or corporate scale. What sort of example might benefit you as an individual?
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    I don't think there is any kind of example that would benefit me as an individual, not for my personal life anyway. I don't need a render farm, I don't have complicated delivery schedules to calculate, I don't even want to use a spreadsheet solver very often away from my desk - and I study computational logistics.
- taejo 11y ago
  * model and forecast the weather (over the next days to months) and climate (over the next decades to centuries) * search/compare/cross-correlate DNA data * simulate chemical reactions, folding of proteins, ... * simulate materials, crystals, etc.
bernardlunn 11y ago
Redecentralization is the next wave and that will put power back to the people as you are rightly asking for
- haxel 11y ago
  Do you think that redecentralization will also depend on the public Internet or perhaps instead focus more on alternative networks?
  - e12e 11y ago
    There are hardly any alternative networks? GSM/3g/4g are illegal to run on an ad-hoc basis most everywhere. Which leaves cabled networks (which are generally not legal to set up as metro/internets -- or even link freely between different buildings if you need to cross community owned land) and wireless mesh-networks. I think both are interesting, but I don't see them forming a global interconnected network capable of delivering symmetric gigabit to 10 billion people (not that the Internet of today does that either -- yet). I suppose local 802.11-whatever community networks might be connected in metro-/internets with high-bandwidth point-to-point links -- but it seems likely that they'd end up connected to the Internet -- perhaps on the ipv6 Internet. Either way, hopefully internet access will continue to evolve like a utility, like electricity and water.
    - paraschopra 11y ago
      >GSM/3g/4g are illegal to run on an ad-hoc basis most everywhere Why? any specific reason?
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Interference with 'official' networks, besides that spectrum use requires a license in just about every country except for some very specific low power unlicensed segments of the spectrum.
- augustl 11y ago
AdieuToLogic 11y ago
> Yet we seem to have less and less control over our smart-phones. An objective analysis of the two predominate smartphone OS's would suggest that we have never had control over the devices we wield. > With so much information about each of us being siphoned off through the Internet, it's easy to wonder whose interest they serve. See statement above. > With all of the advances in computing power, you'd think we'd put a bit more imagination into capturing more value for each individual smart-phone user ... I'm pretty sure this is the case, with Apple having a market cap of $735,165,038,300[1] and Google having one of $367,770,688,769[2]. 1 - http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl 2 - http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/goog http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/goog
- hueving 11y ago
  >An objective analysis of the two predominate smartphone OS's would suggest that we have never had control over the devices we wield. Right, that's the state now. Back when blackberry and nokia were rocking things, it wasn't so grim. >I'm pretty sure this is the case, No, you're stock quotes prove that they are capturing the value of the user, it doesn't say how effective they are at capturing the value for the user. All they need to do is keep people interested in the phone to accomplish the former. That doesn't mean anything about actually providing the best for them.
  - AdieuToLogic 11y ago
    > No, you're stock quotes prove that they are capturing the value of the user, it doesn't say how effective they are at capturing the value for the user. It's gratifying to know I can convey significant meaning in the form of prose ;-). > All they need to do is keep people interested in the phone to accomplish the former. Excellent observation, IMHO. > That doesn't mean anything about actually providing the best for them. Unfortunately, this is generally not a concern for a 10-K[1]. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_10-K https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_10-K
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    When Blackberry and Nokia were leading things, smartphones were far less popular, and the market for smartphone software far less so. Thus, if you wanted something to run on your smartphone, you paid for it. But nowadays, people aren't willing to pay money for smartphone software. So they have decided to pay in another way.
fit2rule 11y ago
We don't have the value of the supercomputer, because our supercomputers don't ship with compilers onboard. Removing compilers - and indeed, software tools in general - from the requirements for a base operating system is the reason we have these disproportionate power cycles in our computing world. The compiler is the single most important application an Operating System can run - yet it is is denied first-class membership in the system image these days. Alas, this circumstance came about in order to create an artificial scarcity of people who can make computers do things. If the compiler is onboard - anyone can learn to use it and then use it, and they don't "need developers". Removing the most powerful tool in an Operating System in order to create this condition, has crippled forward progress. If this ever changes, I expect to be seeing a lot better software out there. But as it stands right now, developers of platforms don't want broadly-accessible and easy to use developer tools to be available to all and sundry. This omission is really just a class battle in disguise. Bring back the compiler as a first-class tool!
- pg314 11y ago
  While I do agree that having a compiler accessible on a platform is a positive, I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim that anyone can learn to use it and then use it. It glosses over the enormous learning curve to develop software with the current mainstream tools (especially the ones that need compilers). If you look at e.g. Mac OS X, where the compiler can be downloaded and installed by anyone, very few do and even fewer develop software. Our current systems are simply not designed to be extended and modified by non-experts. Even in a system like Smalltalk, where that was one of the explicit goals, it doesn't really seem to have worked out. Having the compiler and software tools accessible is only small part of the solution.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    >Our current systems are simply not designed to be extended and modified by non-experts. Yes, that is exactly the point - and it is by design, not nature. >anyone can learn to use it and then use it Well, this has been the case so far - or were those of us fortunate enough to have become software developers only able to attain such lofty states by chance, luck and/or good breeding? Because if that is your position: bollocks. Anyone can learn to read, and write, computer code. All it takes is the intention on the part of the learner to do so .. however when that option is denied them, because OS vendors do everything they can to profit from separated Developer tools, then it is a matter of one intention being greater than the other. Certainly, anyone who wants to learn to write software, can. But don't kid yourself that there haven't been huge stumbling blocks put in their way in order to make the whole subject more specialized. That is a matter of economic reality at this point.
zurn 11y ago
Another side of this is that we don't really have supercomputers anymore, just piles of PC servers with fast network cards - which are called supers for pr reasons. Supercomputer vendors mostly went bust in the 90s because it got too expensive to make custom computer architectures much faster than COTS.
- 4ndr3vv 11y ago
  (COTS = Common off the shelf)
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Commodity-off-the-shelf, actually.
gregorycarter 11y ago
Have you been following the Ubuntu Phone project? http://www.ubuntu.com/phone http://www.ubuntu.com/phone They're somewhat behind schedule, but there have been some news reports of a release this year of a fully convergent phone: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/first-ubuntu-phone-with-convergence-is-being-made-by-bq http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/first-ubuntu-phone-with-c... Ubuntu phone already comes with a terminal, however using currently for apt-get requires disabling OTA updates.
Arnt 11y ago
Capturing data is cheap, local CPU is expensive. In terms of battery capacity, which is the real currency nowadays. It sounds impressive to talk about a supercomputer in your pocket, but its power comes from a battery that weighs only a few grams more than a lacy garter belt. I have a feeling that the utility of the fast CPU is limited to providing responsive reactions to a moving finger. A bit disappointing really.
- jp555 11y ago
  The ability to capture photos & video of my fast moving toddler in challenging situations is immensely valuable. I shoot, edit, and uploaded video at least 100x faster than when I got started with Premiere and a $8000 PC. It's amazing!
kaolinite 11y ago
My parents both fairly recently bought iPads. Previously they used a Windows laptop and an Ubuntu desktop - both far more powerful and giving far more control. Or at least that's one way of looking at it. Their iPads may have limits on their functionality, but as a result of their simplicity, they enable my parents to control a lot more of their computing experience. They rent movies, read books, use RSS (!) via Flipboard, edit photos, install apps (previously they would never install software) and - most importantly - they experiment with new things. Unlike the old PCs, which they'd become more fearful of with every inevitable fault or virus, with their iPads they can just hit the home button. For you and I, you're right - mobile can be limiting. But don't underestimate the power of mobile for those previously intimidated by computers.
- __Joker 11y ago
  I think the argument should be(or is) whether I can have a computing experience other than that provided currently by Apple, Google et all. I think historically user has lost once, seriously Linux never delivered the promised land for more mass users. I would be more interested if users can have mobile experience which is not tainted by interest of big co-operations. Unless there is an alternative, I hardly doubt there will be any change in status quo.
  - seqastian 11y ago
    firefoxOS to the rescue.
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      How would that be any different?
  - netcan 11y ago
    if it comes, the big corporate interest will have been "The shoulders of giants." Apple's iphone, the competition from Google and all the financial benefits from that have generated a lot of progress fast. I use open office, and it's a good example I think. If we didn't have MS office, would we have open office? would it be as good? If Firefox OS succeeds, would it ever have been made without the smartphone market having already been defined?
higherpurpose 11y ago
I guess you can see it not as "You have a supercomputer in your pocket" but more like "You have - our - supercomputer in your pocket".
rimantas 11y ago
This is like complaining that you do not control each of the spark plugs in your car by yourself.
- haxel 11y ago
  It's more like complaining about license plate readers, cabin voice/video recorders, hackable cars, GPS tracking, and being increasingly dependent on a centralized service for repairs and maintenance. The "good old days" were actually different. Yes, there are some benefits to all of those "features", but it seems prudent to consider and expose their risks as fervently as we're promoting the rewards. Perhaps the current balance isn't ideal over the long term, and we'll only see improvement by actively exploring the whole picture (whatever it is).
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Also, give us admin privs. (Yes, I know, on some devices one can root). I have admin privs on every other computer I own.
agumonkey 11y ago
Often thought about all the walking GFLOPS in our pockets, thinking "man we have Cray just to swipe lolcats". This comment http://tek.io/1fwoxZH http://tek.io/1fwoxZH from this article http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/the-80s-supercomputer-thats-sitting-in-your-lap/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/the-80s-super... explains how even old Crays are still more efficient for real work. Still we have uber capable thingies doing nothing. We don't need faster, we need to teach what they can do to people and let them have it their way.
- haxel 11y ago
  Yeah, it does seem like more a problem of philosophy or perspective than a lack of advanced technology. We have all of the ingredients for a variety of dishes, but it seems we're settling into one basic recipe: centralized lockdown.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Let's say that's how social human and culture/natural order is. Lots of people wanting shiny things to play with others. Everything else is irrelevant as long as people aren't deeply aware of it (which is often when things break in their/our face).
Devid2014 11y ago
"Everyone gets a pocket supercomputer from past century." One can not compare smart-phones power to modern supercomputer ! And like you say you can not do all the useful things that are possible with supercomputer and PCs ! Smart-phones for me is a looked consumer gadget.
kriro 11y ago
I think the important part here is not to focus on "supercomputer" but rather on "pocket". Imo the big thing is that you essentially have what used to be a desktop then a laptop and can carry it around in your pocket and do similar stuff with it AND it's socially accepted. Noone blinks an eye if you use your smartphone all the time. Rewind a bit and people would have blinked an eye if you had used your (bulkier) laptop all the time. It's light and mobile yet sufficiently powerful. Locational context matters a lot more now and isn't tapped into fully. +it's usually connected to the hive aka Internet so you essentially carry lots of information with you at all times. I'd argue that instant access to information (prices etc.) can be more enabling than pure access to the underlying computer. +some other gizzmos like an always available camera/voice recorder/music player [don't get me wrong, I'm fully aboard the more free systems NOW train]
aswanson 11y ago
The supercomputer in your pocket statement is meaningless. A calculator in my pocket in 1991 was a supercomputer compared to an abacus or the Apollo 11 computer. A gsm or star-tac motorola cell phone in my pocket in 1997 was a supercomputer compared to that calculator. So what?
- sswaner 11y ago
  It is not meaningless, it is describing parallel (or at least comparable) revolutionary technology. Think about each you mentioned: How many industries where positively impacted by the advent of cheap pocket or desktop calculators? Would the Apollo missions have been possible (or as successful) if the astronauts had to calculate every azimuth with a slide rule? The slide deck seems focused on the point that mobile is the next major revolutionary technology, comparable to the introduction of super computers and the other revolutionary tech that you cite.
- GoldenMonkey 11y ago
  Really? You're going to dismiss the ability to pull up maps and be guided to your destination. Voice recognition, browsing the web, a music player, and having a video game console in your pocket.
  - aswanson 11y ago
    Im not dismissing any of those things. Im saying the phrase has been used so much in vague contexts that it has become meaningless.
    - gtremper 11y ago
      Yeah, every computer is a super computer compared to those that came before it.
s73v3r 11y ago
We are capturing value for those users. Those users have decided beforehand, though, that they don't want to pay up front for their apps to realize this value. So they have to pay in another way.
brudgers 11y ago
The value people often get from a locked down device [for popular definitions of "locked down device"] is of a kind with the value people get from a book or a television. The kind of potential value is below that of a general computing device, but there's still a lot of value in that space; e.g. books provide value despite being static.

by haxel 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

sliverstorm 11y ago

What a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. This isn't some Marxist struggle between the owners of the means of production and the smartphoneliteriat. The reason we don't realize the value is because we haven't concocted applications. Supercomputers crunch data & perform math. That's what they are good at, and their value (as I know it) is primarily rooted in their ability to advance math & science (& defense, as it relates to math & science). But nobody has really figured out what sort of massive scientific computation we should be doing with our pocket computers. Some of it is there- for example, I wrote an app that performs geodetic math that was supercomputer-only in the 60's- but in general, folding proteins and simulating physics in your pocket is not useful to Joe Smartphone.

mirimir 11y ago
To the extent that smartphones are "supercomputers", they're mostly super at games and video. Otherwise they're more like dumb terminals than PCs.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  As used today, yes. And that's kind of the point of the original observation. Smartphones are not true supercomputers. But they still smoke a Cray-1, and yet we use them as dumb terminals. What can we use that power for, that filled a room twenty years ago? Their existing roles have value! But there is a sense of leaving something untapped, when you use them only as dumb terminals. A sense of, what am I missing?
  - brador 11y ago
    It doesn't make sense to have a supercomputer as your phone. In your phone you value excellent long battery life. Better to offload the supercomputer part to central processing and pipe down a "viewport". Economics always wins.
    - robotresearcher 11y ago
      But you already have the performance of a 1980s supercomputer in your phone. It doesn't have to make sense.
      - s73v3r 11y ago
        But you have a limited power supply.
        mirimir 11y ago
        I can easily carry a power brick. Or a hydrogen fuel cell like they use for power tools.
        s73v3r 11y ago
        But most people either can't or don't want to.
    - e12e 11y ago
      "Phone" isn't really a term that makes sense for the future. It's just a somewhat anachronistic bundling of microphone/speaker/digital radio/battery (and the tiny bit of logic needed for that to work together). It does make sense to carry the things that comprise a "smart phone" (as above, +powerful cpu that can scale down to conserve power, gpu, screen/hud/display, camera(s), low-power local-area digital radio (eg: bluetooth), touchscreen (or drawing surface/digitizer), text-input (keyboard), gps, interface for connecting 4k+ display, possibly direct-attached storage), along with a headset, preferably wireless. I just don't see why this should all be forced into one unit. I'm not sure how much power miracast would require -- but could it really be more than what the led-lit touch-screen uses? Because surely it'd be easier to have big battery+wlan/miracast/bluetooth/cpu stuffed in your pocket, and a small display+touch+bluetooth device on your wrist, with the option to pull out a phablet-sized hi-res touch-screen with it's own battery, but only miracast+bluetooth (maybe a gpu)? The "smart stick" (the smarphone less the camera/screen/mic) could probably be made to fit more nicely in a pocket if there was no need for a display. Shape it like a rod, add a powerful vibrator and the thing would even be dual-use ;-) (seriously, though - if it's intended to be kept in a pocket, a vibrator might make sense, as well as a couple of status leds). The screen is going to be a bit clunky anyway (unless it folds/rolls up) - so no real issue to add a dedicated battery for it. Maybe I should file a patent for "smart rod".
haxel 11y ago
So information has no value? Why do we say that information is power? I suppose that idea could be just as wrong as saying we have a supercomputer in our pocket, but the idea that information is power is much, much older. Information isn't being hoovered up at the cost of billions of dollars without a very good reason for doing so. Still, it seems a matter imagination. If our personal computers have tremendous (and accelerating) power, there's few actual limits to where we can take them. The deck even has a slide that talks about pulling components off the shelf and playing lego with them. I think it's prudent to consider whether the average person is, all things considered, empowered by our Internet-connected computers. If so, great. If not, or not enough, then how?
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  You're trying to tie together unrelated ideas. Beneficial utilization of a phone's incredible raw computational muscle is basically unrelated to the harvesting of your personal data, in which the phone is merely acting as a networked array of sensors. There is virtually nothing stopping you from harnessing the full computational power of your phone supercomputer-style to do whatever data crunching you might imagine. The challenge is the imagining (and implementing)
  - haxel 11y ago
    I'm speaking of value, which I view as the balance of risk vs reward. Your view may differ. On one side, it seems to me that the reward or benefit we're receiving isn't anywhere near proportional to the power increases we've seen. On the other side, what are the risks of exposing so much personal information? Receiving information seems much more valuable than giving it. After all, information has a price. If giving is not so great, shouldn't we be a little concerned about the consequences of trading away so much of it? Information asymmetry strikes me as the root of many power imbalances. So, if we want more _value_ out of our "pocket supercomputers", it seems we have to consider the overall value proposition. Then perhaps we can figure out how to do better.
    - nostrademons 11y ago
minthd 11y ago
You don't have to take it as far as science. Previously ,Google had a web search engine that searched discussion groups - a great tool, and an important one from the democratic point of view. Now it's gone. Why ? One guess would be that no company wants to slap ads near a vibrant discussion - not a good place to sell lies. So in a sense this do fit the theme OP raised. BTW, with connectivity - the distinction between smartphone and server is little. Even weak phones have supercomputers at their disposal.
- icebraining 11y ago
  One guess would be that no company wants to slap ads near a vibrant discussion - not a good place to sell lies. Really? Is there any large discussion forum that doesn't have ads? Reddit, SomethingAwful, they all make their income slapping ads near discussions.
  - minthd 11y ago
    reddit just proves the point , huge traffic , bad monetization.
  - minthd 11y ago
    reddit just proves the point , huge traffic , bad monetization.
- navait 11y ago
  You can still search discussion google groups. They removed it because most people didn't want it.
ozmbie 11y ago
It's the idea that the content available on our devices is shaped by the economic framework that supports it. When the economic model is advertising and data tracking, the types of apps/services that are available are the ones that work best with advertising and data tracking. And it turns out that consumer-oriented social sharing services fit that model pretty well. So that's mostly what we have. Those services do have value. But I think it's limited. When I walk into a cafe with a beautiful view and everyone is on their phones, or when people awkwardly scroll through Twitter at a group event instead of enjoying the world around them or interacting with strangers....I dont see people gaining value. Especially when it's children doing it. I see compulsive addictive behaviour that erodes human value for the benefit of advertising companies.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  The economic model follows consumer desires, not vice versa. It's a lot easier for a startup to change their business model to fit what people will actually pay them money for than for them to convince people who aren't willing to pay to ante up. If people would pay for value, startups would spring up to capture that. That's actually what we see in the SaaS business. Consumer entertainment has always been a hard sell, which is why the radio and TV businesses were also ad-supported.
mahranch 11y ago
> The reason we don't realize the value is because we haven't concocted applications. Some of us realize the value. I just think it's impossible for most people to not take it for granted. If you're under 30, you inherently take it for granted because you know of nothing else, you simply cannot appreciate the technology as much as someone who lived a good chunk of their lives without it. You can "know" and imagine what life was like before our current internet culture, maybe even empathize, but there are still things that are unknowable and can't be experienced by just going off the grid. One such example is culture. The culture of society was different because of the technology (or lack of) at the time. Everything from how you interacted with your friends, to how you received and consumed media, to banking and your place of employment. Everything was different before our current technology. The people who grew up with supercomputers in their pockets don't know of a world where 3-way calling was something magical and you'd get giddy when you used it (or horrified when it was used as a tool to trick you into admitting you liked someone and they were on the phone silently listening). Or a world where if you wanted to find an address or phone number, you had to go find a phone book. Wanted to go on a vacation and look up cool places to see while there? You were heading to the library. If you were on the road driving, and wanted to call someone, you had to stop off and find a payphone (and pay a fortune if you were out of the area). Good luck if you blew a tire. But back then, more people were inclined to stop off and help because of this very problem. Again, society was very different back then. People take for granted the fact that you now have all the world's information and entertainment at your fingertips. I know because I take it for granted myself and I know what the world was like before our current technology. I'm in my late 30s. If I take it for granted from time to time, how can someone who never knew a life without internet & cell phones appreciate what they have? I know this sounds a bit preachy, and I didn't really mean for it to come across that way, but I find myself echoing Louis CK sentiment on technology and today's youth. His bit here really struck a chord with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E

mirimir 11y ago

So is anyone building such a smartphone? And if not, why? My guess is that it would cost too much, without the commodification of our private information. Just like the web.

jbigelow76 11y ago
>My guess is that it would cost too much, without the commodification of our private information. Ask and ye shall receive. Uber, the darling of both the mobile world and the "sharing" economy is set to start tracking your every location so they can serve up fucking ads[1]. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/uber-ftc-privacy-customer-location-contacts http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/uber-ftc-p...
- bernardlunn 11y ago
  I will treasure my bicycle even more. I hear the birds singing, not some stupid jingle.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    I predict that bicycles will join the IoT. It will be a feature. Like some bastard child of OnStar and medical alert systems ;)
haxel 11y ago
What if our information stayed private and we used our "supercomputers" to do all sorts of data-mining, or AI, or data-science on it? Same stuff the big guys are doing, but for ourselves. Smaller, higher quality datasets. If our smartphones worked like this, and we'd benefit more from better information, then we'd also have a pretty good reason to develop advanced information-centric UIs and focus a bit more on security and trust.
- mirimir 11y ago
  That would be wonderful. But I doubt that providers would ever bundle them. So most people would consider them to be too expensive. And so they would die, like Blackberry has.

SixSigma 11y ago

The people I know who program super computers do it to * simulate nuclear explosions * model the internet [1] [1] http://phys.org/news/2009-09-scientists-successfully-boot-million-linux.html http://phys.org/news/2009-09-scientists-successfully-boot-mi... Neither of which, nor similar activities, I need to do on the train.

noja 11y ago
Traditionally, supercomputers were used to do those things.
- moconnor 11y ago
  Currently supercomputers are used to do these things, because you can't do them on a mobile phone or desktop. The "supercomputer in your pocket" discussion is somewhat disingenuous - an iPhone6 from 2014 wouldn't even have made the top 10 in 1993 over 20 years earlier. A million-fold increase in transistor density and it still wouldn't rank as a supercomputer. There are a lot of fascinating things you can do with more computing power, but it's not really clear that doing so on a power- and heat-constrained mobile device brings a competitive advantage in a highly-connected environment.
haxel 11y ago
Those examples benefit their owners, providing competitive advantage on a national or corporate scale. What sort of example might benefit you as an individual?
- SixSigma 11y ago
  I don't think there is any kind of example that would benefit me as an individual, not for my personal life anyway. I don't need a render farm, I don't have complicated delivery schedules to calculate, I don't even want to use a spreadsheet solver very often away from my desk - and I study computational logistics.
taejo 11y ago
* model and forecast the weather (over the next days to months) and climate (over the next decades to centuries) * search/compare/cross-correlate DNA data * simulate chemical reactions, folding of proteins, ... * simulate materials, crystals, etc.

bernardlunn 11y ago

Redecentralization is the next wave and that will put power back to the people as you are rightly asking for

haxel 11y ago
Do you think that redecentralization will also depend on the public Internet or perhaps instead focus more on alternative networks?
- e12e 11y ago
  There are hardly any alternative networks? GSM/3g/4g are illegal to run on an ad-hoc basis most everywhere. Which leaves cabled networks (which are generally not legal to set up as metro/internets -- or even link freely between different buildings if you need to cross community owned land) and wireless mesh-networks. I think both are interesting, but I don't see them forming a global interconnected network capable of delivering symmetric gigabit to 10 billion people (not that the Internet of today does that either -- yet). I suppose local 802.11-whatever community networks might be connected in metro-/internets with high-bandwidth point-to-point links -- but it seems likely that they'd end up connected to the Internet -- perhaps on the ipv6 Internet. Either way, hopefully internet access will continue to evolve like a utility, like electricity and water.
  - paraschopra 11y ago
    >GSM/3g/4g are illegal to run on an ad-hoc basis most everywhere Why? any specific reason?
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Interference with 'official' networks, besides that spectrum use requires a license in just about every country except for some very specific low power unlicensed segments of the spectrum.
augustl 11y ago

AdieuToLogic 11y ago

> Yet we seem to have less and less control over our smart-phones. An objective analysis of the two predominate smartphone OS's would suggest that we have never had control over the devices we wield. > With so much information about each of us being siphoned off through the Internet, it's easy to wonder whose interest they serve. See statement above. > With all of the advances in computing power, you'd think we'd put a bit more imagination into capturing more value for each individual smart-phone user ... I'm pretty sure this is the case, with Apple having a market cap of $735,165,038,300[1] and Google having one of $367,770,688,769[2]. 1 - http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl 2 - http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/goog http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/goog

hueving 11y ago
>An objective analysis of the two predominate smartphone OS's would suggest that we have never had control over the devices we wield. Right, that's the state now. Back when blackberry and nokia were rocking things, it wasn't so grim. >I'm pretty sure this is the case, No, you're stock quotes prove that they are capturing the value of the user, it doesn't say how effective they are at capturing the value for the user. All they need to do is keep people interested in the phone to accomplish the former. That doesn't mean anything about actually providing the best for them.
- AdieuToLogic 11y ago
  > No, you're stock quotes prove that they are capturing the value of the user, it doesn't say how effective they are at capturing the value for the user. It's gratifying to know I can convey significant meaning in the form of prose ;-). > All they need to do is keep people interested in the phone to accomplish the former. Excellent observation, IMHO. > That doesn't mean anything about actually providing the best for them. Unfortunately, this is generally not a concern for a 10-K[1]. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_10-K https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_10-K
- s73v3r 11y ago
  When Blackberry and Nokia were leading things, smartphones were far less popular, and the market for smartphone software far less so. Thus, if you wanted something to run on your smartphone, you paid for it. But nowadays, people aren't willing to pay money for smartphone software. So they have decided to pay in another way.

fit2rule 11y ago

We don't have the value of the supercomputer, because our supercomputers don't ship with compilers onboard. Removing compilers - and indeed, software tools in general - from the requirements for a base operating system is the reason we have these disproportionate power cycles in our computing world. The compiler is the single most important application an Operating System can run - yet it is is denied first-class membership in the system image these days. Alas, this circumstance came about in order to create an artificial scarcity of people who can make computers do things. If the compiler is onboard - anyone can learn to use it and then use it, and they don't "need developers". Removing the most powerful tool in an Operating System in order to create this condition, has crippled forward progress. If this ever changes, I expect to be seeing a lot better software out there. But as it stands right now, developers of platforms don't want broadly-accessible and easy to use developer tools to be available to all and sundry. This omission is really just a class battle in disguise. Bring back the compiler as a first-class tool!

pg314 11y ago
While I do agree that having a compiler accessible on a platform is a positive, I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim that anyone can learn to use it and then use it. It glosses over the enormous learning curve to develop software with the current mainstream tools (especially the ones that need compilers). If you look at e.g. Mac OS X, where the compiler can be downloaded and installed by anyone, very few do and even fewer develop software. Our current systems are simply not designed to be extended and modified by non-experts. Even in a system like Smalltalk, where that was one of the explicit goals, it doesn't really seem to have worked out. Having the compiler and software tools accessible is only small part of the solution.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  >Our current systems are simply not designed to be extended and modified by non-experts. Yes, that is exactly the point - and it is by design, not nature. >anyone can learn to use it and then use it Well, this has been the case so far - or were those of us fortunate enough to have become software developers only able to attain such lofty states by chance, luck and/or good breeding? Because if that is your position: bollocks. Anyone can learn to read, and write, computer code. All it takes is the intention on the part of the learner to do so .. however when that option is denied them, because OS vendors do everything they can to profit from separated Developer tools, then it is a matter of one intention being greater than the other. Certainly, anyone who wants to learn to write software, can. But don't kid yourself that there haven't been huge stumbling blocks put in their way in order to make the whole subject more specialized. That is a matter of economic reality at this point.

zurn 11y ago

Another side of this is that we don't really have supercomputers anymore, just piles of PC servers with fast network cards - which are called supers for pr reasons. Supercomputer vendors mostly went bust in the 90s because it got too expensive to make custom computer architectures much faster than COTS.

4ndr3vv 11y ago
(COTS = Common off the shelf)
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Commodity-off-the-shelf, actually.

gregorycarter 11y ago

Have you been following the Ubuntu Phone project? http://www.ubuntu.com/phone http://www.ubuntu.com/phone They're somewhat behind schedule, but there have been some news reports of a release this year of a fully convergent phone: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/first-ubuntu-phone-with-convergence-is-being-made-by-bq http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/first-ubuntu-phone-with-c... Ubuntu phone already comes with a terminal, however using currently for apt-get requires disabling OTA updates.

Arnt 11y ago

Capturing data is cheap, local CPU is expensive. In terms of battery capacity, which is the real currency nowadays. It sounds impressive to talk about a supercomputer in your pocket, but its power comes from a battery that weighs only a few grams more than a lacy garter belt. I have a feeling that the utility of the fast CPU is limited to providing responsive reactions to a moving finger. A bit disappointing really.

jp555 11y ago
The ability to capture photos & video of my fast moving toddler in challenging situations is immensely valuable. I shoot, edit, and uploaded video at least 100x faster than when I got started with Premiere and a $8000 PC. It's amazing!

kaolinite 11y ago

My parents both fairly recently bought iPads. Previously they used a Windows laptop and an Ubuntu desktop - both far more powerful and giving far more control. Or at least that's one way of looking at it. Their iPads may have limits on their functionality, but as a result of their simplicity, they enable my parents to control a lot more of their computing experience. They rent movies, read books, use RSS (!) via Flipboard, edit photos, install apps (previously they would never install software) and - most importantly - they experiment with new things. Unlike the old PCs, which they'd become more fearful of with every inevitable fault or virus, with their iPads they can just hit the home button. For you and I, you're right - mobile can be limiting. But don't underestimate the power of mobile for those previously intimidated by computers.

__Joker 11y ago
I think the argument should be(or is) whether I can have a computing experience other than that provided currently by Apple, Google et all. I think historically user has lost once, seriously Linux never delivered the promised land for more mass users. I would be more interested if users can have mobile experience which is not tainted by interest of big co-operations. Unless there is an alternative, I hardly doubt there will be any change in status quo.
- seqastian 11y ago
  firefoxOS to the rescue.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    How would that be any different?
- netcan 11y ago
  if it comes, the big corporate interest will have been "The shoulders of giants." Apple's iphone, the competition from Google and all the financial benefits from that have generated a lot of progress fast. I use open office, and it's a good example I think. If we didn't have MS office, would we have open office? would it be as good? If Firefox OS succeeds, would it ever have been made without the smartphone market having already been defined?

higherpurpose 11y ago

I guess you can see it not as "You have a supercomputer in your pocket" but more like "You have - our - supercomputer in your pocket".

rimantas 11y ago

This is like complaining that you do not control each of the spark plugs in your car by yourself.

haxel 11y ago
It's more like complaining about license plate readers, cabin voice/video recorders, hackable cars, GPS tracking, and being increasingly dependent on a centralized service for repairs and maintenance. The "good old days" were actually different. Yes, there are some benefits to all of those "features", but it seems prudent to consider and expose their risks as fervently as we're promoting the rewards. Perhaps the current balance isn't ideal over the long term, and we'll only see improvement by actively exploring the whole picture (whatever it is).

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Also, give us admin privs. (Yes, I know, on some devices one can root). I have admin privs on every other computer I own.

agumonkey 11y ago

Often thought about all the walking GFLOPS in our pockets, thinking "man we have Cray just to swipe lolcats". This comment http://tek.io/1fwoxZH http://tek.io/1fwoxZH from this article http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/the-80s-supercomputer-thats-sitting-in-your-lap/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classics-rock/the-80s-super... explains how even old Crays are still more efficient for real work. Still we have uber capable thingies doing nothing. We don't need faster, we need to teach what they can do to people and let them have it their way.

haxel 11y ago
Yeah, it does seem like more a problem of philosophy or perspective than a lack of advanced technology. We have all of the ingredients for a variety of dishes, but it seems we're settling into one basic recipe: centralized lockdown.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Let's say that's how social human and culture/natural order is. Lots of people wanting shiny things to play with others. Everything else is irrelevant as long as people aren't deeply aware of it (which is often when things break in their/our face).

Devid2014 11y ago

"Everyone gets a pocket supercomputer from past century." One can not compare smart-phones power to modern supercomputer ! And like you say you can not do all the useful things that are possible with supercomputer and PCs ! Smart-phones for me is a looked consumer gadget.

kriro 11y ago

I think the important part here is not to focus on "supercomputer" but rather on "pocket". Imo the big thing is that you essentially have what used to be a desktop then a laptop and can carry it around in your pocket and do similar stuff with it AND it's socially accepted. Noone blinks an eye if you use your smartphone all the time. Rewind a bit and people would have blinked an eye if you had used your (bulkier) laptop all the time. It's light and mobile yet sufficiently powerful. Locational context matters a lot more now and isn't tapped into fully. +it's usually connected to the hive aka Internet so you essentially carry lots of information with you at all times. I'd argue that instant access to information (prices etc.) can be more enabling than pure access to the underlying computer. +some other gizzmos like an always available camera/voice recorder/music player [don't get me wrong, I'm fully aboard the more free systems NOW train]

aswanson 11y ago

The supercomputer in your pocket statement is meaningless. A calculator in my pocket in 1991 was a supercomputer compared to an abacus or the Apollo 11 computer. A gsm or star-tac motorola cell phone in my pocket in 1997 was a supercomputer compared to that calculator. So what?

sswaner 11y ago
It is not meaningless, it is describing parallel (or at least comparable) revolutionary technology. Think about each you mentioned: How many industries where positively impacted by the advent of cheap pocket or desktop calculators? Would the Apollo missions have been possible (or as successful) if the astronauts had to calculate every azimuth with a slide rule? The slide deck seems focused on the point that mobile is the next major revolutionary technology, comparable to the introduction of super computers and the other revolutionary tech that you cite.
GoldenMonkey 11y ago
Really? You're going to dismiss the ability to pull up maps and be guided to your destination. Voice recognition, browsing the web, a music player, and having a video game console in your pocket.
- aswanson 11y ago
  Im not dismissing any of those things. Im saying the phrase has been used so much in vague contexts that it has become meaningless.
  - gtremper 11y ago
    Yeah, every computer is a super computer compared to those that came before it.

s73v3r 11y ago

We are capturing value for those users. Those users have decided beforehand, though, that they don't want to pay up front for their apps to realize this value. So they have to pay in another way.

brudgers 11y ago

The value people often get from a locked down device [for popular definitions of "locked down device"] is of a kind with the value people get from a book or a television. The kind of potential value is below that of a general computing device, but there's still a lot of value in that space; e.g. books provide value despite being static.