Friday, January 26, 2007
Technology eh?
Blog about technology.... Hmm. Well, there's always microprocessors. See right now we use silicon for our chips. And lately the chip manufacturers have been pushing the boundaries of physics with how small the chips are. So they started stacking them. You've probably heard of the AMD and Intel dual core, and now quad core processors. They double or quadruple the power of a single chip. What's interesting is that there's research into processor technologies using molecules that would be able to match current processor power and be only the size of a single bacterial cell. So you could fit billions into the size chip we have today. Scary thought - but wait. There's more. There's research into using a single atom as the processor unit making the processor thousands of times smaller than the molecular chip. But wait, there's more.... It has been hypothsized that a processor could be built from electrons, using their spin, a quantum attribute of the particle. That would shrink the size of the processor millions of times smaller than the atomic processor. I don't know the word for how many of those you could fit into a chip the size of a processor today. But I can tell you it has a lot of zeroes.
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Technology, huh? Size, huh?
In the novel Musashi, by Yoshikawa (which we used to have in Sterling, but now no more) the Samurai Musashi, best swordman ever in Japan (lost once to Jo, walking stick, different story) after 900 some pages faces a final battle with his rival. Follows a quotation from a different source:
" Track 4 of "Two Skies, Two Swords, Five Spheres," a series of pieces inspired by Miyamoto Musashi, arguably the greatest swordsman in Japanese history. This particular piece concerns Musashi’s long rivalry with Sasaki Kojirô, another master swordsman with a weakness for spectacle and showiness. In April 14, 1612 the two finally dueled on the small island of Funashima. Kojirô was using a nodachi, a type of long two-handed sword about 90 cm in extension... he called it "Monohoshi Zao" or “The Drying Pole†after the long pieces of bamboo used to hang wet clothes out to dry. Musashi came late and unkempt — possibly as an attempt to unnerve his opponent — and killed him with a bokken (wooden sword) that he had carved from an oar on the boat ride over; he specifically used an oar so that it would be longer than the nodachi. Most versions of the fight describe how Musashi simply disembarked and with a single blow defeated Kojirô. Musashi switched to wood after this fight, believing it to be superior in reliability to steel. "
Kojira had, in a sense, better technology- longer blade, which, given their near equality of ability, should have decided the contest.
Musashi carved an oar. I wonder, did he have superior technology- reliable wood? Or was this a "Don't mess with Texas" moment-- Don't challenge Musashi.
In his FIVE RINGS book, Musashi says the best warrior has no favorite weapon, but uses all.
We see this in the modern movie RONIN, in which DeNiro, questioned by a (fraudulent) Skorpion Machine pistol user, says of weaponry "It's like a toolbox; you reach in and get whichever tool works." (DeNiro's characer uses a .45 pistol, as do I, hoping size will trump inaccuracy)(oh well)
I am reminded of a piece by P.J. O'Rourke in Rolling Stone, dealing with Somalia/Mogadishu pre-Blackhawk. He said of Mogadishu "everything that can be done by a gun has been done here."
What has this to do with technology?
Military strength - a gun, for instance- is a technology, like chips. Like many technological fixes, it may be "necessary, but not sufficient."
Don't mess with Musashi...
I'm just a simple caveman, Musashi Processers frighten and confuse me.
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