What If?

Today will be light, really a chance to catch up on prior surveys, but here’s an intriguing question for now.

I think we’ll find a moral to this story, maybe a few.

Aliens show up tomorrow, not to invade, but to trade.

They offer us just one thing: computers.

It operates a thousand times faster than the fastest PC, and is at least a thousand times whatever better in any other parameter. It has a monitor so life-like, birds fly into it. It can fit in your shirt pocket, and when you want to use it, you just stretch it out to the proportions you like. It needs no electricity.

Whatever feature you’d want in a computer system, it has. It comes with an OS that simply will not crash, ever, with a core of basic applications built into the OS.

It’s smart enough to adapt itself to your preferences and habits. It’s also smart enough to realize when you’re making an illegal copy of something and refuses to do it (and if you keep trying, it will document and report to the authorities).

It creates its own wireless Internet with others of its kind at transfer rates of gigabytes per second.

Programming is pretty much up to humans. Programming tools are far more advanced and easier to use, but rigorous self-testing makes program development longer.

There will be no new model next year or ever. The machine is essentially indestructible. It’s meant to last far longer than you, and will. You buy this, you’ll never need another computer nor will your kid.

The price? $25,000. Take it or leave it. The price will never go down. Don’t expect people to be able to make copies of it for decades, if not centuries.

Can you overclock it? Would it change your decision whether you could or not?

What do you do? How would you feel about this?

Ed

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