Question

were do you see computers in the next 500 years?

Answer 1

They will be obsolete. They will be nothing. We will have holographic devices the size of a wristwatch that can do almost anything and have the storage of every computer on the world.

Answer 2

Or the computers might take over and enslave the human race.

Answer 3

whichever comes first... if we invent FULL AI (dear lord lets hope that never happnes...) thaen number 2 will happen =/

Answer 4

Indeed.

Answer 5

Definitely going to happen. Someday one will invent full AI. Someday...

Answer 6

then someday... we will commit full global suicide... just because of one mans curosity... instead of killing the cat... itll kill the world and theres no coming back... but thats not for a while now so at least theres that! lol

Answer 7

Well, I see them having a much more prevalent role then they already do. I'll assume you mean non biological computers. The reason I think this is because of the demand we already have for them according to this trend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Answer 8

Interesting...

Answer 9

Basher, I can't really agree with that. That wristwatch can still be called a "computer".

"Computers" evolve extremely fast, but I think we are fast approaching that slope where the improvements will slow down.

Answer 10

Anything that is Turing complete is a computer. Given a sufficient amount of time, any calculation can be completed on a turing complete machine, be it pen and paper, mechanical, or other implementations of computation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness
There are two broad categories of computers, biological, and non biological.
I'll assume you are talking about non biological. To say that the current rate of technology will stay the same or not is hard to say, generally, what has happened is a new paradigm of computation came about to compensate. We are reaching the limits of what is physically possible with electronic components due to things like Quantum tunneling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling
The next paradigm of computation in quantum computing. In 500 years, I would bet strong AI (AI that is at or above human intelligence) will have already taken off and killed all of humanity. This is known as the singularity, and has been predicted to some degree of accuracy by Ray Kurzweil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil.
Non human intelligence will take over. It's not a cute little thing for nerds to speculate about. There will be blood and suffering.

Answer 11

You think the nuclear bomb was bad? Please the bomb was a mere shadow of the power of intelligence, it was the shadow of things too powerful, that mere languages such as English cannot express it.

Answer 12

cute little nerds?! im a geek... get it right @cenchrus ! LOL

Answer 13

@cenchrus. All we can do is speculate. Noone can say with absolute certainty what will happen. I'm more concerned with mankind's obsession with immortality and curing all diseases. The population of the world is growing too fast, but we are trying so hard to make people live longer. I want all diseases to be cured BUT I think our prime directive should be to slow down population growth by educating people.