future computers

["sagalore " <sagalore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Anybody here a fan of Star Trek?

I know this question sounds silly, if not juvenile.  How do you think the Enterprises (or Voyagers) computer system processes?  Is it trillions of MISC type optical processors, or it is one giant Pentium XVII?  Has there ever been an episode where the captain says "hail them", and at a push of the console the view screen gets a fatal protection fault and the whole ship self destructs?

I think that is a legitimate, however comical question.  The ship's computer core is no larger than some of the super computers we have today, everything else is just terminals, subsystems, and storage.  Maybe in a few decades Forth will not reign supreme, maybe another language that is even faster and smaller... but the minimal approach is not a limitation - it's powerful.