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FUTURE? IS THERE ONE?" —AN IMPORTANT PAPER ON COMPUTING, DELIVERED IN JAPAN IN 1985 AS A MEMORIAL TO THE JAPANESE PHYSICIST YOSHIO NISHINA, MENTOR TO SIN-ITIRO TOMONAGA (WHO SHARED THE 1965 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS WITH FEYNMAN AND JULIAN SCHWINGER). In this paper, Feynman discusses some technical possibilities for making machines, covering three topics; Parallel computing, including discussions of the Cray supercomputer, the Cosmic Cube, and MIT's "Connection Machine"; the possibilities of reduction of energy loss, including the problems of cooling associated with large computers; and the possibilities in reducing the size of computing elements. The present draft is an excellent example of why this sort of material, rather than a nearly finished draft, is so interesting, as we get a nice look into how Feynman's work evolved from early drafts to the finished product; the first few lines of the manuscript show for example, that the original three sections of the paper were "
A. Parallel. Describe present machines", "
B. Software. Vision, Speech etc.", and "
C.
Hardware. Atoms. Swan neck machinery. Reversible."
The published version of the talk begins "It's a great pleasure and honor to be here as a speaker in memorial for a scientist that I have respected and admired as much as Prof. Nishina. To come to Japan and talk about computers is like giving a sermon to Buddha. But I have been thinking about computers and this is the only subject I could think of when invited to talk."