🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 19:11:24 -0400, Michael Black <mbl...@pubnix.net>
wrote:

>On Fri, 3 Aug 2018, Mike Spencer wrote:
>
>>
>> David Wade <g4ugm@dave.invalid> writes:
>>
>>> On 30/07/2018 23:25, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
>>>> - Attributed to Thomas J. Watson (Sr.), but likely spurious
>>>
>>> That was supposed to be in 1943 when no one had built a computer that
>>> stored its program in RAM.
>>
>> I love the scene in Cryptonomicon, circa 1944, in which Lawrence
>> Waterhouse is contemplating the problem of "bury" & "disinter" while
>> playing the great organ in the Qwlgmian church, all stops out and the
>> air full of dust from decades-disused pipes, envisions mercury tube
>> [1] RAM [2] in much the same way as Tesla claimed to have imagined the
>> alternating current motor, tears out of the church barefoot in
>> mid-arpeggio, love and lust forgotten in his wild enthusiasm to build
>> it *now*.
>>
>In Heinlein's "Door into SUmmer" he has some memory tube that was created 
>for military use.  From the descrption, it's hard to figure out what he 
>was imagining.  But he can train his robotic devices by sending them 
>through the motions, and the memory tube has lots of space for that. But, 
>for a "secretary" type robot, he'll only give it a limited vocabulary and 
>it may have to ask for a spelling of a woard.  The limitation was that the 
>memory tube was too limited in capacity.  Now maybe it's some analog form 
>of memory, but a dictionary won't take up much room, but I'd think 
>controlling a robot doing fine work would require a lot more memory.
>
>>
>> [1] Someone will surely correct my choice of technical terms. Y'all
>>    are career hackers; I'm just a blacksmith with pretentions to
>>    technology.
>>
>Blacksmithing isn't technology?  Just because something is familiar 
>doesn't cease to make it technology.  It might be "old technology" but 
>still technology.
>
>   Michael

Flint knife and buttons with button holes are forms of technology.