

Well you’re right that it’s not practical now. By “soon” I was thinking of like 10+ years from now. And as I said, it would likely start in systems that aren’t used for those applications anyway (aside from web browsers, which use way more ram than necessary anyway). By the time it takes over the applications you listed, we’ll have caches as big as our current ram anyway. And I’m using a loose definition of cache, I really just mean on-package memory of some kind. And we probably will see that GPU style memory before it’s fully integrated.
Tests would be a pretty bad idea. It is easy to imagine the ways that someone could use that to attack their political opponents. Similar things were used to disenfranchise voters in the past. Also, it is too easy to corrupt the legitimacy of such a test. All a person would need to do is get a heads up of how the test works and practice for it. Or, have the test designed to be too easy to pass. It’s easy to say “make it impartial, scientific, and dignified”, but that doesn’t mean it will be. I seriously doubt any governmental body ever has or will be that trustworthy. An actual age limit would be objective and clear though, making it much more practical.