technology accelerating

This is the second one in a four-component collection searching at the big thoughts in Ray Kurzweil’s e-book The Singularity Is Near. ​Be certain to study the other articles:

“Technology is going past mere device making; it's miles a process of making ever more powerful era using the gear from the preceding round of innovation.” –Ray Kurzweil 

A decade ago, smartphones (as we recognise them by means of these days’s requirements) didn’t exist. Three decades in advance, nobody even owned a computer. Think about that—the first personal computer systems arrived about 40 years in the past. Today, it appears nearly everyone is gazing at a sparkling, handheld computer. (In reality, two-thirds of Americans very own one, consistent with a Pew Report.)

Intuitively, it looks like era is progressing quicker than ever. But is it really? According to Ray Kurzweil—yes, it surely is. In his book The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil indicates generation’s quickening pace and explains the force in the back of it all.

This article will explore Kurzweil’s explanation of this driving force, which he dubbed the regulation of accelerating returns, and the sudden implications of era’s acceleration.

Moore’s Law is well-known—however it isn’t unique

Computer chips have turn out to be more and more powerful whilst costing much less. That’s due to the fact during the last five many years the number of transistors—or the tiny electrical additives that perform simple operations—on a single chip had been doubling often.

This exponential doubling, called Moore’s Law, is the reason a modern-day phone cheaply packs a lot dizzying capability into one of these small package deal.

[Moore’s Law may be nearing certain physical limitations that will be challenging to overcome. Go here to learn how broad exponential growth in computing can continue.]

The technological development in pc chips is well known—but noticeably, it isn’t a special case. A range of different technology show similar exponential boom, whether or not bits of statistics stored or DNA base pairs recorded. The final results is the equal: competencies have elevated by way of hundreds, thousands and thousands, and billions for less fee in only a long time.

The above charts display some examples of accelerating technologies, but more examples are ample. These do not at once rely on the doubling of transistor counts—and yet every one actions alongside its personal exponential curve simply as pc chips do.

According to the regulation of accelerating returns, the pace of technological development—mainly records generation—quickens exponentially through the years due to the fact there may be a not unusual pressure riding it ahead. Being exponential, as it seems, is all approximately evolution.

Technology is an evolutionary procedure

Let’s start with biology, a acquainted evolutionary procedure.

Biology hones natural “technologies,” so to talk. Recorded inside the DNA of residing things are blueprints of beneficial tools referred to as genes. Due to selective stress—or “survival of the fittest”—effective innovations are exceeded alongside to offspring.

As this process performs out generation after generation over geological timescales, chaotically but incrementally, remarkable boom takes region. By building on genetic progress as opposed to starting over, organisms have improved in complexity and capability over time. This revolutionary strength is obvious almost everywhere we look on Earth these days.

“Evolution applies superb comments,” Kurzweil writes. “The greater succesful methods on account of one level of evolutionary progress are used to create the next degree.”

Biology’s many inventions consist of cells, bones, eyes, thumbs, brains—and from thumbs and brains, technology. According to Kurzweil, generation is likewise an evolutionary process, like biology, simplest it movements from one invention to the next a whole lot faster.

Civilizations enhance with the aid of “repurposing” the ideas and breakthroughs in their predecessors. Similarly, each generation of technology builds on the advances of preceding generations, and this creates a fine remarks loop of improvements.

Kurzweil’s massive concept is that every new era of generation stands on the shoulders of its predecessors—on this manner, upgrades in technology allow the following technology of even better era.

Technological evolution speeds up exponentially

Because each technology of generation improves over the past, the charge of progress from model to model speeds up.

To see this, consider creating a chair with hand gear, strength tools, and eventually assembly lines. Production gets faster after every step. Now consider every era of these equipment is likewise used to design and construct higher equipment. Kurzweil suggests such a system is at play in the layout of ever-quicker computer chips with the software and computer systems utilized by engineers.

“The first computers were designed on paper and assembled by means of hand. Today, they're designed on computer workstations with the computer systems themselves operating out many info of the following generation’s layout, and are then produced in fully automated factories with only constrained human intervention.” – Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near

This acceleration can be measured in the “returns” of the generation—together with pace, performance, price-performance, and average “energy”—which enhance exponentially too.

Further, as a era turns into greater powerful, it attracts greater attention. The result is a flood of recent sources—consisting of accelerated R&D budgets, recruiting pinnacle skills, and many others.—which can be directed to in addition enhancing the technology.

This wave of recent assets triggers a “2d degree” of exponential boom, in which the charge of exponential boom (the exponent) also begins accelerating.

However, particular paradigms (e.G., integrated circuits) won’t develop exponentially for all time. They develop until they’ve exhausted their capacity, at which point a new paradigm replaces the vintage one.

The sudden implications of the law of increasing returns

Kurzweil wrote in 2001 that every decade our average fee of development changed into doubling, “We gained’t experience a hundred years of progress within the 21st century—it will likely be extra like 20,000 years of progress (at nowadays’s rate).”