Sensor Size Ramblings

Clouds at 5:00AM

Yup, this was a cloud formation taken at 5:00AM, actually aboard a ship, a cruise ship, in the middle of the Caribbean.  I think this had something to do with the fact that I was in the  middle of a very big sea.  Or maybe could fine similar cloud formation on land, over a vast plain.  I took this with a P&S camera, with a sensor the size of a fingernail, or to be more exact, the size of the pinky fingernail. 
That leads to the current heated discussion of the new Nikon 1 system.  The first thing people notice and talk about is that it uses a sensor which is considered "too small".  People are saying the M4/3 was the optimal size, and this CX size is just too small.  Fast rewind to when the 4/3 system was introduced.  All considered the attempt to create another system based on another sensor size suicidal, and the 4/3 never took off.  That was a time when Nikon was striving to introduce the full-frame sensor to compete with Canon.  That was when both Nikon and the 4/3 camp were claiming 12 megapixel was enough.  That was the time when people were saying the 4/3 system was too little, too late.  Fast forward to yesterday and people were saying the CX was too small.  I cannot predict the future, maybe the CX size is really too small.  But who would have thought Sony could cramp 24 megapixel onto a APS-C size sensor and mass producing them and put them into $1000 cameras?? The digital revolution isn't over yet.