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Here’s a recent posting I made to a discussion in the Society and Technology class I’m taking right now at DePaul. Nothing highly novel here, just my thoughts on the future importance (and unimportance) of processing speeds.

Partly I’m posting this since I’ve been so dry lately on the blog front and figured it was time to say something. More coming soon, I promise.

Personally, I tend to agree with software developer and author Paul Graham that for personal computing and even a good deal of the business market, we will see an increasing move toward web-based applications. Paul goes so far as to say that in 5 or 10 years, most computers will be running not much more than a web browser on the local machine. He cites a number of advantages, among them that for the end user this model would be: “easier, cheaper, more mobile, more reliable, and often more powerful than desktop software.” On the back end there would be greater security, distributed backups, faster software development and easier update deployment. You can find his great essay (and others) by clicking here.

Using the Web 2.0 type applications currently available, one can email, calendar, archive and manipulate photos, manage projects, create and collaborate on documents and spreadsheets, read aggregated RSS feeds,and much, much more. Here’s a good idea of what is out there along these lines today.

OK, so what does all that have to do with this discussion? Well, I think that for the average computer user (with the exception of gamers that demand more and more power to run their virtual worlds), processor speeds will mean less and less in the next few years. Web applications do not depend on processor speed on the user side as much as they do bandwidth. Far more important to the end user will be processor miniaturization, but that is another discussion entirely.

However irrelevant speed will become to the average user, processor speed is still immensely important for professionals working with digital media production, and will continue to be so for a very long time. The only limit to the need for more powerful processors in those areas is the limit of human imagination and creativity, as far as I can tell. Artists will continue to push the envelope in terms of the definition and complexity they want to use in their films, music and art.

Also, as we rely more and more on information technology to make our world work on the large scale, processor speed will continue to be crucial for creating the infrastructure of the internet, banking systems, transport networks, medical facilities, telecommunications backbones and so on. A more connected world means more data. More data necessitates more power, plain and simple.

Overall, I don’t see the push for increased processor power to wane any time in the foreseeable future, though we should expect processor speed to decline as a key selling point for manufacturers in the next couple of years.

-A.