The really sad thing is that 20 years ago those 5.5 TFlops were doing things like advanced weather modelling, nuclear physics modelling, major economic models and the like. Now they generate emojis and cleverly make cartoons out of pictures. Can you imagine that futurists of twenty and more years ago were scratching their heads and saying if we can just get enough computer power we can do a lot of really mundane things.
That's a very negative view on things. Sure, we piss away ridiculous amounts of computing power and many washing machines and coffee makers have computers on board they would have killed for 50 years ago. Yet we also do a lot of amazing things with what we have. Right now the biggest supercomputer ever has been constructed out of many thousands of distributed nodes by people volunteering their computing power to fighting Covid. People also do amazing things on a much smaller scale. CNC manufacturing at home has become a possibility and people are doing things that were flat out scifi not too long ago from the comfort of their own home. It's absolutely amazing what one person or a small group can achieve.
I actually agree with your comment. But still find it sad that of the billions of processors shipped each year only a fraction of a percent (which is still a huge number) do all of the good things you are talking about. Include Google in the mix and you get over the percentage point level. A somewhat larger number makes the reports we write prettier than the typewriter generated things of 50 years ago, and maybe saves a few man-hours in the process. And that the bulk of them do the silly things I was talking about.
I agree wholeheartedly with CatalinaWOW. Let's be honest. 99% of what people use the "new" technology for is entertainment. Video games. Facebook. Tik Tok. Music videos.
Someone mentioned weather forecasting. I find it beyond comprehension how little weather forecasting has progressed in the last decades. The average person can do as well just looking at a radar map/movie, seeing which way the rain is heading and what the temperatures are, and predict fairly closely what tomorrow's weather will be. The "experts" can't figure out what the weather will be in the next few days with any accuracy. Plus or minus 10 degrees F is ridiculous. And how many times have you received a sudden alert of bad weather coming in the next hour? And even then it fizzles out. They have NO CLUE. But hey, they've got these incredibly powerful supercomputers doing simulations that aren't accurate.
Desktop computers? Sometime take a look at a desktop computer motherboard from the 90's and one from today. They look virtually identical. The core technology hasn't changed. What's changed is tweaking the performance improvement. Faster and more efficient. So people can play video games.
Self driving cars? Are you freakin' serious? Who the hell needs or wants a self driving car? It sounds cool, but that's about it. It's an opportunity for a new industry, so people push it. Like wind and solar. New technology equals new opportunity for new money-making industries. Even if they are incredibly expensive and of limited ACTUAL use.
Nonsense like Alexa? Are you serious? So we can sit on our butts and have a computer do stuff for us? But it's cool and fun so we automatically consider it good. Drones?? 3D printers?? Smartphones?? The list goes on and on.
Where's the REAL and USEFUL advances in technology? Cancer cures? Fixing the real causes of deaths and starvation around the world? Really improving our lives rather than having the entire universe with their heads stuck in their smartphones watching cats playing piano.
At the end of the day, if we're being honest, we'll admit that we LIKE all those fun and entertaining and mindless technologies, so we automatically classify them as GOOD. And we go to great lengths to come up with any possible justification we can think of, even if it's totally irrelevant and ridiculous. And nobody can criticize those technologies cuz we like them. Even if they're freakin' useless.
Hey, I'm an engineer, and I like technology as much as the next guy. But geez, let's get real folks.