Part Deux

Issue number 2 and I'd like to look back briefly at spintronics since there was an article on it last issue. It's been nearly 40 years since I read the first research articles on spintronics and while we've a few basic circuits as proven developments, we are mostly still waiting for materials science work to bring us the easily manufactured, small components we need to get this technology out of the labs and into real products. These problems are still slowly being resolved. The payoff is low power and high speed computing with little to no heat generation.

If we were leaving this to humans only, I'd say we're still 50 years from a mass produced spintronic computer. With AI getting it's feet wet, who knows? Problem solutions are being iterated and tested at ever faster rates as we adopt AI and involve advanced simulations into scientific discovery work. We are on the cusp of a major shift in our pace of technological advancement and that is at least part of the point of naming this publication The Shift Register, as it will be documenting these changes. I hope you are enjoying the publication so far and please let me know if you'd like to see some other topics covered. New science and tech stuff of course, but I'm open to some other topic headings beyond what we have today. Good luck out there!

Kudos to NotebookLM for the audio summary.

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In this issue the two primary drivers of the SHIFT in our technologies are center stage as robotics and AI. These complementary technologies are very close to reaching a level of intelligent environmental manipulation on par with human workers. The bad news for us is that the AI portion has already reached a level where it is being used to rapidly self-iterate improvements. This means that while machine learning techniques have been around for decades, the new developments in artificial intelligence will not take anywhere near as long as it did when humans were doing all the work.

As an example, recent videos showing the Tesla Optimus robot dancing weren't accomplished by years of live tele-operations training, or trial and error in the real world, but by millions of simulated operations accomplished in a virtual environment over the course of a few months. This is what I would call non-linear compression of technological advancements and as AI becomes more entrenched in our research work, so the rate of technological change will continue to increase. It is the primary technology leading to a major SHIFT in our world today and why I close so many of my takes wishing us all good luck.

We'll need it, just to survive the next century. Hopefully, it all works out and we achieve some sort of technological nirvana where everyone can just do whatever work they feel like (self actualized), but have all the resources they need to survive. Somehow, that doesn't sound like the most likely outcome. Humans are just way too messy for that.

It's not all gloom and doom though. Emerging technologies in energy, medical fields, food production, and many other non-military applications are quite promising. Perhaps, we'll figure out how to be less messy at some point.