Foresight

Computers used for gaming include a graphics card (GPU) separate from the CPU (central processing unit). How many calculations do you think your graphics card performs every second while running video games with incredibly realistic graphics? Maybe 100 million calculations a second?

Well, 100 million calculations a second is what was required to run a Mario 64 from 1996. Today we need more power. Maybe 100 billion calculations a second? Well, then you would have a computer that could run Minecraft back in 2011.

In order to run the most realistic video games in 2024, such as Cyberpunk 2077, you would need a graphics card that can perform around 36 trillion calculations a second. This is an incredibly large number, so let’s take a second to try to conceptualize it.

Imagine doing a long multiplication problem, such as a seven-digit number times an 8-digit number, once every second. Now let’s say that everyone on our planet does a similar type of calculation, but with different numbers. To reach the equivalent computational power of our graphics card and its 36 trillion calculations a second, we would need about 4,400 Earths filled with people, all working at the same time and completing one calculation each every second. It’s rather mind boggling to think that one device can manage all those calculations.

Now, let’s move from gaming to the world of Artificial Intelligence which were trained using a large number of GPUs. A flagship Nvidia A100 GPU can perform 5 quadrillion calculations per second (a 5 followed by 15 zeros). In 2024, a medium sized AI will be trained using at least 8 GPUs. Very large models can use hundreds or even thousands of GPUs. In 2024 Elon Musk showcased Tesla’s ambitious new AI training supercluster named Cortex in Austin, Texas. The supercluster is made up of an array of 100,000 GPUs, each one performing 5 quadrillion calculations a second, using as much power as a small city.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Omniscience of God – While artificial intelligence has made remarkable strides, it cannot compare to God’s omniscience which far surpasses any human creation. He sees all, knows all, and understands the intricacies of every life. The hairs of every head are numbered (Matt. 10:30), the length of our lives is known (Psa. 139:16), and not even the smallest bird falling to the ground escapes his attention (Matt. 10:29); 2) Knowledge of God; Wisdom of God – AI can only process events after the fact, and perhaps anticipate some possible actions. But God knows all things, past, present, and things to come before they even happen (Isa. 46:10)

Editor’s Note: For an excellent statement of the omniscience of God, see A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, (Harper, 2009) p. 62 “He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn….”

Intel employed a futurist named Brian David Johnson whose was to determine what life would be like ten to fifteen years in the future. Johnson was the first futurist to work at Intel. Johnson said:

It takes around 10-15 years to design, build and deploy a new chip. This is why Intel needed someone who can look 10-15 years into the future and tell them what the world they are designing for will be like. The work that I do is very pragmatic. I am judged on my ability to tell people what is coming so they can do something about it. … Let’s design futures that are designed for real people, and the futures of real people.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Of course, there is only One who truly knows the end from the beginning. We need not fear the future, but trust our God who knows our future. It is right to plan, but wrong to seek to control our lives.

In the year 1900, a German chocolate company released 12 postcards predicting what life would be like 100 years in the future. So how close were they to predicting our life today? Well, you decide based on these descriptions of the postcards from 1900:

• Personal airships (a picture of couples flying around in their personal hot air balloons).
• Watching a live drama performance while not in the theater. (You mean, kind of like television?)
• An X-ray machine for police officers. (To detect crimes in progress within buildings).
• A roofed city. (Like a football stadium under a dome).
• Underwater ships for tourists. (Like taking a Carnival or Norwegian cruise vacation in a submarine.)
• Easy excursions to the North Pole. (Hey, honey, let’s spend the weekend at the North Pole.)
• A machine for creating good weather.

Possible Preaching Angles:

The future is uncertain. Humans will always get some predictions right and some very wrong. But Jesus said he knows the future and he holds the future already.

The radio program, This American Life, tells the story about the late writer David Rakoff, who had a hard time believing what was right in front of his eyes. In 1986, Rakoff’s company in Tokyo was working on a computer program that would allow expats like himself to write short little messages to one another after logging on to the network.

David was not impressed. He thought, “What kind of loser would log onto a computer [just to] talk to someone?” And in a moment of decisiveness, he went into work and quit. “Sayonara, suckers! Good luck with your ‘network’!” Of course, we can all guess what that network became. It was the beginning of a little thing called the internet.

David has other stories too. Earlier in the 1980s, he went to a dance club and heard a young blonde singer from Michigan and thought, “Boy, is she lousy!” That singer was later known by the name, “Madonna.” Again, working in publishing, he was handed a manuscript and passed it off as “subliterate drivel” and an “easy pass.” That turned out to be a book called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which went on to sell 15 million copies as one of the best-selling works of the 1990s.

Apparently, seeing isn’t always believing--even when it’s right in front of your eyes.

When Dave Boon first saw the avalanche that swept his car over a guardrail on Interstate 40 in Denver, Colorado, it was only "a puff of powder, 10 yards ahead" of his two-door Honda Accord. After that brief warning, a snowy burst of wind knocked the car out of control. "Not even a second later," Boon said, "a freight train hit us"—what he later learned to be a roaring boxcar blast of tons of mountain snow.

Boon had traveling with his wife, June, and a 13-year-old boy named Gary Martinez on their way to a youth group ski trip. According to Martinez, the three of them had been discussing the possibility of an avalanche before they were struck. "It was before we turned the corner," he said, "and we were talking about avalanches and how there was so much snow and stuff. Then we turned the corner and saw some white powder, and it slammed us into the guardrail."

The wall of snow knocked the car up over the rail and sent it crashing and rolling hundreds of feet down a steep mountain slope. In the middle of the descent, the car struck a tree and was knocked out of the avalanche's grasp. It came to a stop upside down and pointing back uphill.

Fortunately, Boon and his wife were well trained. After clearing an airway and freeing himself from the seatbelt, Boon was able to exit the car along with Martinez, then cut his wife free from her restraints. Despite several bumps, bruises, and scrapes, none of the three required hospitalization.

For Boon, the experience was a reminder that warnings and hints of danger need to be respected. "The signs say, 'Avalanche Area, No Stopping,'" he said. "We've driven by there hundreds of times…. We have skied avalanche chutes, worn (emergency) beepers, always carried an avalanche shovel. We've seen avalanches. But in our wildest dreams, we never imagined getting hit in a car by one."

In 1903, a mountain fell on a town in the Canadian Rockies. The town of Frank, Alberta, was buried under 100 million tons of limestone. At least 76 men, women, and children were killed.

It was the rich seams of coal in Turtle Mountain that caused people to build a town under its shadow. The desire for coal led residents to ignore the regular tremors in the rocks above them. In fact, miners counted on the tremors to knock loose seams of coal and make their work easier. Days before the disaster, the mine had become "virtually self-operating in that all the miners had to do was shovel up coal as it fell from the ceiling."

Even the local Blackfoot nation did not like to go near the mountain, referring to it as "the mountain that walks." But the town ignored all these warnings. Just after 4:00 a.m., April 29, 1903, an enormous piece of Turtle Mountain, 3,000 feet long and 500 feet thick, broke off and tumbled into the valley below.

The exact number of dead will never be known. Of the 76 known dead, only 12 bodies were ever recovered.

So also many ignore the plain warnings of Scripture to their own peril.

While many cities and villages along the Indian Ocean suffered catastrophic losses from the December 2004 tsunami, the port city of Pondicherry, India, and its 300,000 inhabitants were spared. Just beyond city limits, 600 people were killed by the devastating tidal wave, but Pondicherry withstood the tsunami. Why were they protected ?

The answer began 250 years ago when France colonized the city. The French built a massive stone seawall. Year after year, the French continued to strengthen the wall, piling huge boulders along its 1.25-mile length.

The French stopped building Pondicherry's seawall in 1957, but their work prepared them for a disaster that would occur five decades into the future.

Eleven miles off the east coast of Scotland, in the North Sea, stands the Bell Rock Lighthouse. It has endured the ferocious onslaught of the North Sea's violent storms since 1811. It rests upon less than one acre of solid rock. That small reef is covered by seawater for 20 hours of every day. The builder of the lighthouse, Robert Stevenson and his band of 65 skilled artisans, had only four hours each day to chink away the stone and gouge a foundation in the rock. As a result of this painstakingly patient work, the 115-foot-tall lighthouse is still in use today.

In a similar way, parents have a short period of time in which to build their children's lives to withstand the storms of life. Parents must take advantage of that window of opportunity and carve out a foundation for them on solid rock.

The Hibernia oil platform in the North Atlantic is 189 miles (315 kilometers) east-southeast of St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. The total structure, from the ocean floor to the top of the derrick, is 738 feet high and cost over $6 billion to build.

Unlike the fated Ocean Ranger, a platform that sank in 1982 with all 84 men aboard lost at sea, the Hibernia's design incorporates a GBS (gravity based structure) which anchors it to the seabed. It is fastened to the ocean floor in 265 feet of water.

The structure does not move. It is stationary because it sits in the middle of "iceberg alley," where icebergs can be as large as ocean liners. Sixteen huge concrete teeth surround the Hibernia. These teeth were an expensive addition, designed to distribute the force of an iceberg over the entire structure and into the seabed, should one ever get close.

Hibernia's owners take no chances. Radio operators plot and monitor all icebergs within 27 miles (45 kilometers). Any that come close are "lassoed" and towed away from the platform by powerful supply ships. Smaller ones are simply diverted using the ship's high-pressure water cannons or with propeller wash. As rugged and as strong as this platform is, and as prepared as it is for icebergs to strike it, the owners have no intention of allowing an iceberg to even come close.

But the big one will come, and Hibernia is designed accordingly. It is built to withstand a million ton iceberg, with designers claiming it can actually withstand a 6 million ton iceberg with reparable damage.

What's amazing is that a million-ton iceberg is expected only once every 500 years. One as large as 6-million-tons comes around once every 10,000 years.

That's what I call preparation and vigilance.

Although some historians question the veracity of all the facts in the following story, it is accurate enough to make an interesting point.

The U.S. standard railroad gauge is four feet, eight-and-one-half inches. How did we wind up with such an odd railway width? Because that was the width English railroad-building expatriates brought with them to America. Why did the English build them this wide? Because the first British rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did they use that gauge? Because the same jigs, tools, and people who built wagons built the tramways and used the standard wagon-wheel spacing. Wagon-wheel spacing was standardized due to a very practical, hard-to-change, and easy-to-match reality. When Britain was ruled by Imperial Rome, Roman war chariots, in true bureaucratic fashion, all used a standard spacing between their wheels.

Over time, this spacing left deep ruts along the extensive road network the Romans built. If British wheel spacing didn't match Roman ruts, the wheels would break. The Roman standard was derived after trial-and-error efforts of early wagon and chariot builders. They determined the best width that would accommodate two horse butts was four feet, eight and one-half inches. Thus the United States standard railroad gauge is a hand-me-down standard based upon the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

This doesn't end at railroads. Two big booster rockets attach to the sides of the main fuel tank that lifts the space shuttle into orbit. Thiokol makes these solid-fuel rocket boosters, SRBs, at its Utah factory. The engineers who design the SRBs ship them from factory to launch site by train. The railroad from the factory runs through a mountain tunnel only slightly wider than the railroad track. Even if Thiokol engineers wanted fatter SRBs, the railway gauge limits their design. Modern space shuttle design follows horses' butts.

Minimum amount boxer Mike Tyson earned in the nine years before filing for bankruptcy in August 2003: $300,000,000.