We finish off the tour, with several other cool looks at some of the most expensive – and advanced – technology out there. You wouldn’t believe how much money went in to some of this stuff. But I had to imagine: what would that newsroom have looked like 15 years ago?
LCDs were only a science fiction dream back then, and computers were much larger and harder to network. My guess is it was mostly paper and pen work, with some of the researchers doing their work on the phone or very few on the newly developed internet. That is how much technology has improved our production and efficiency, however, I’m pretty sure paper and pen was a lot cheaper solution!
That brings me to my next point. On my way home, my laptop battery decided it would stop holding a charge. My laptop has caused me so much trouble, its not even funny. I decided it was time for something new – and decided to take a look around the Atlanta Airport because I intended to write this column on the way home. Luckily, there was a Palm store open at the airport. I had been looking at Palms to keep me organized for quite a while, so I figured I might as well check it out. I met a very nice sales person who promptly took me over to their feature model: the Tungsten E2. Its loaded with Bluetooth, expansion slots, infrared port, an Intel 200 mhz processor, a color screen, and various other odds and ends. This guy had me sold in about 5 minutes, and in that time, he also convinced me to get the keyboard too. A small $300 purchase later, I had something with about the same functionality as my laptop (without the CD drive and advanced stuff) for about 1/4 of the cost of what my laptop cost me, and it was approximately 1/10th the size of my laptop. The keyboard folds up into a rectangle the size of my Palm, and the palm does exactly as its name implies: it fits in the palm of your hand!
Now, looking back on it all, I can’t help but wonder what we would do without Moore’s Law. It pushes manufacturers to develop smaller and more efficient technology as much as they can. Certainly, it still is effective today. It makes things look very cool, and in a way, is almost elegant in nature. CNN was impressive to me because it was a simple concrete building, with bare walls spare for the advanced technology they held. No visible wires, not chaos like you’d expect in a place with so much computer equipment. It was a great balance: simple, yet very pleasing to the eye. The Palm was another example of elegance: it is so much smaller than the laptop, and to think that it has the same features as it is amazing.
I challenge you, the reader, to find examples of Moore’s Law around your area. Just think what the same thing would have looked like 15 years ago and imagine how much different it would have been!
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