General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Statistics on phone calls, text messages, emails,etc. [View all]Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)For a machine to sort, catalog, and store? Nope. I was born during the ear of Apollo, when man did the impossible, and walked on the moon. Man has traveled to the deepest point on earth, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana's trench. Where the pressure is tons per square inch. We have flown aircraft at more than Mach 5, and built the most incredible flying machine in the form of the Space Shuttle. Now, all of those accomplishments are with notable exceptions, squashed by even more incredible technological achievements.
How many plucky little rover bots are running around, or have been running around on Mars? Where is Voyager 1 and 2? Those were probes made with much the same technology as the 1970's cable taps, and they're still beeping away sending back data as they scream out of the solar system at unimaginable speeds.
Place limits on mans ingenuity at your peril, history tells us that. Pearl Harbor was secure, because it was only 42 feet deep, and air dropped torpedoes needed at least 70 feet before the moved back to the surface.
Man could not fly, it was impossible.
I have a book full of quotes from experts who insist that something is either impossible, impractical, or unwanted. Like IBM's CEO who said that there would only be a need for three, or four computers in the world ever. There are that many in nearly every household today.
They can capture that much data, and they can process, filter, sort, and collate that much data. Disbelieve if you wish, if it makes you feel better, but as a simple engineering effort, knowing what they did forty years ago? I'd put my money on yes they can.