Computer Prediction Used to Design Better Organic Semiconductors 32
An anonymous reader writes "Creating a flexible display requires finding an organic material that's both durable and capable of carrying an electric signal fast enough. To create such a material requires choosing the right compound and combining it with an organic base material. It's a hit and miss affair that can take years of synthesis to get right, but even then the final material may not be good enough. Stanford and Harvard researchers have come up with a much faster solution: use computer prediction to decide on the best compound before synthesizing begins. They also proved it works by developing a new organic semiconductor material 30x faster than the amorphous silicon used in LCDs."
What's going on? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's going on with Slashdot lately? There's a major advance in materials science research and so far a full 100% of the comments are either sarcasm about how stupid the research is or someone arguing that the solution is obvious.
I just... don't even know what to say anymore. Companies have been pouring money down the drain trying to discover these materials and these guys figured out how to do it more quickly, more effectively, and at a fraction of the cost. Obviously this is a problem that has been looked at by hundreds of engineers and scientists, and this is the first group to successfully apply this technique; and all we can muster is a collective circle jerk trying to sound smart.
Pathetic
Re:Long-term implications? (Score:4, Insightful)
In essence, even if I can look through a search space a 1000 times as fast, that doesn't mean I will find a solution that is a 1000 times as good. But with access to both software and hardware improvements, substantial improvement may be possible.
That is in essence the problem with Kurzweil-style Singularity predictions. That exponential growth of computing power is somehow magic that will make everything possible.
Anyway, I personally think that the long term implications of this are a world kinda like Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano [wikipedia.org], except the jobs of engineers and managers aren't safe either.