The future is harder to predict than ever before. Most of us would appreciate a sense of stability which is not derived from the morning news. That's why Psalm 46 has come to be special to me in recent days.
One of my college professors claimed that he knew precisely when Jesus would return: on Monday morning, since he will come "in an hour when you think not" (Luke 12:40, KJV). This morning would definitely qualify.
Thus there is good news in today's Wall Street Journal: Intel Corp. has developed a prototype chip which possesses the equivalent of 80 electronic brains. The device is the size of a fingernail, but it holds number-crunching capacity which once required a roomful of computers. Future videogame systems could track users' motions and transfer them into the game, so that when people play video football, they're playing football.
These chips are called "multicore" because they pack together core circuitry from multiple microprocessors. One version will soon be able to perform 32 tasks at once. The Intel version will do a trillion operations per second; in 1996, such capacity required 2,000 square feet of computer and 500,000 watts of power.
None of us can really predict our technological future. I still remember the advent of electric typewriters, then my first desktop computer with its eight-inch floppy disks. Each was cutting edge at the time. It's hard to see how my current laptop could be improved significantly, but I have no doubt that it will be. The other day I saw an article describing the new pen computer now being sold in Japan: it projects a screen on the wall and a keyboard on the table, and does everything your computer and mine can do.
The rate of change today can seem overwhelming. I've read that the world store of information doubles every 18 months, and that 90 percent of all the change in human history has occurred in this generation. A few years ago, did you think you'd be using your computer to read a daily email essay like this one? I certainly didn't expect to be writing one. Never say never.
The future is harder to predict than ever before. Most of us would appreciate a sense of stability which is not derived from the morning news. That's why Psalm 46 has come to be special to me in recent days. The poet describes our shifting culture: "Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall" (v. 6). But then he assures us, "The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress" (v. 7). Here's the catch: a fortress is not much help unless we're inside it. A citadel in the distance is no protection when the enemy is at hand. How do we step into his protection this morning? Our Father invites us to "be still, and know that I am God" (v. 10). Have you done that yet today?
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