User:Jim
Introduction
Welcome, this section will contain objects of the future. This means that products / services will be described that should become "HOT" in the future.
Objects of the future
The following products are currently in beta version or have just launched and will be discussed:
- The Holo disk
- Windows Live / Live operating systems
- Sun's "public computing grid" service
- Fuel Cell
- Flexible screens
- O-led
The Holo disk
The holographic disk is a compact disk that can contain way more data than is possible on currently available cd and dvd disks. It can be written at a transfer speed of 1 Gbit a second, offers currently 300 gigabyte storage space and will offer more than one terabyte of data storage (around 4 terabyte).
The holographic disk is a disk that stores data in 3 dimensions in stead of on one horizontal plane. Holographic recording technology records data on discs in the form of laser interference fringes. This approach is rapidly gaining attention and will become the next high-capacity, high-speed data storage technology for the upcomming decennia.
Because of its 3d storage searching speed even increases to 32Gbytes/s which cannot be matched or copied by upgrading any of the existing storage possibilities.
In my view the size and speed of this new data storage medium combined with its searchability makes it the ideal candidate for the future where finding the appropreate data is even more important than storing it.
Next to the holographic disk the concept of holographic storage will also take off as researches all over the world are confident that this technique can be used to create diskless storage systems. This would mean that for example storage boxes could be created and for every square inch it grows it could contain several extra terabytes.
Proto disk 1TB Proto card 30GB Storage progress How it works Maxell offers 300GB holo disks in 2006 Wiki description
Other items
Just for fun you can read this article, maybe star treks warp engine will become a reality:
Magnetic propulsion
Academic review on theory behind systems thinking
Theoretical origin of systems thinking This two page essay will discuss the theoretical origin of systems thinking by following the development of Holism and Reductionism in a chronological order. Broader explanations and additional information can be found on Wikipedia in the following sections: • Systems thinking • Systems theory • Systems philosophy • Holism • Reductionism • Systems dynamics
Theory of systems thinking can actually be traced back to the concepts called Holism and Reductionism. Evolvement of these terms in history will be handled in the next two paragraphs until the point that they were combined to form systems thinking. Holism Holism which was introduced in 1926 by Jan Smuts He defined it as follows: "The tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution.". Although Smuts was the first to define this concept, the definition itself says that Holism has existed since the big bang.
From 1945 on to 1955 the holistic concept was combined with principles from ontology, science philosophy, physics, biology and engineering. Von Bertalanffy introduced his world famous “General Systems Theory” and from that time on the term Systems Theory came into use. During the same period research was done into cybernetics by Ross which provided some insight on communication patterns and applicable mathematics which could also be used in Systems Theory.
Systems Theory started to gain more and more attention and grew into other fields including geography, sociology, political science, organizational theory, management, economics, computer science, etc. This however does not mean that systems thinking became common knowledge, but more on that later.
In 1960 the term System Dynamics was invented by Forrester which is focused at understanding the dynamic behavior of complex systems. System Dynamics itself can actually be seen as an evolved and more sophisticated version of the earlier invented control theory . Control theory itself focused more on in system dynamics and control while System dynamics states that system structure and inter-system behavior is just as important.
In the proceeding years System Dynamics was further developed and in 1970 Thom and Zeeman presented their “catastrophe theory” , which classified phenomena where small changes in circumstances could cause sudden shifts in behavior. The next step in systems dynamics was the world known mathematical Chaos theory which described emergence, adaptation and self-organization all being basic system principles.
These theories were eventually combined by several authors to form a new research area called complex systems , this area focuses on systems composed of many parts which are coupled in a nonlinear fashion. The quote from Smuts about the sum of the parts being more than the whole is predominantly present in this research area. This is because the parts have nonlinear relationships and thus when one item changes a little another can change tremendously. Reductionism Reductionism states that complex systems can be reduced to simpler or fundamental things that together form a whole that is equal to the sum of its parts. Reductionism is therefore seen as the opposite of Holism. Several philosophical reductionism like areas like minimalism and monism have their roots before Christ was born. The meaning of reductionism as it is used now a days is mostly called scientific reductionism, which has its origin in the second half of the twentieth century.
Reductionism has not really evolved over the years but has grown into multiple directions: ontological reductionism , methodological reductionism , theoretical reductionism , scientific reductionism , linguistic reductionism and greedy reductionism . Although reductionism hasn’t really evolved it has had to defend itself against theories which tried to prove that reductionism is flawed. Systems Thinking In recent years a new area of research, Systems Thinking, emerged out of the combination of complex systems (thus holism) and reductionism. Systems thinking focuses on getting an overview of all the objects and relations in a system including feedback loops . When working in this area and applying it to real life situations it however has to step off its holistic view and let itself be modeled which will result in having to apply reductionism theories.
Systems thinking can be divided in three system areas, hard systems , soft systems and evolutionary systems . The hard systems area really focuses on modeling the entire system with strict controls and thus uses most of the reductionism concepts. Soft systems is about tackling systems that are difficult to quantify. Evolutionary systems focuses on complex systems that can also evolve over time.
Applying reductionism in systems thinking can also be seen in an area like scenario planning where the idea is to understand systems and model them so scenarios can be formed. These scenarios are often formed for strategic purposes.