Computers and heat density

Tim Shoppa wrote: As a species we're lazy and impatient as all hell. Nobody in any position to change things is going to want to produce an efficient, elegant solution that reduces costs in the long term if the money's there to just throw more resources at a problem and make cost savings in the short term. If they don't take that approach, somebody else will. Long term thinking just doesn't enter into it; by the time the system's fallen over into a smouldering heap the people responsible will long since have moved on to the next short-term project, leaving new people to come in, reinvent the wheel, and do the same thing all over again. Why it's getting steadily worse, I don't know. I'm tempted to lay the blame at the feet of faster and more widespread communications; if people can communicate more quickly and further afield then there'll be more pressure to get a job done as quickly as possible and with an eye to short-term savings only. Had modern communications existed without computers, and the computer only invented now, I expect we would have seen a raft of giant inefficient systems springing up almost overnight and the specialised machines of past decades just wouldn't have happened.