technology feels like it’s accelerating
“Technology goes beyond mere tool making; it's miles a procedure of making ever greater powerful technology the usage of the tools from the previous spherical of innovation.” –Ray Kurzweil
A decade ago, smartphones (as we understand them via today’s requirements) didn’t exist. Three many years earlier, nobody even owned a computer. Think approximately that—the first non-public computer systems arrived approximately forty years in the past. Today, it seems nearly all people is observing at a glowing, handheld computer. (In reality, two-thirds of Americans personal one, in line with a Pew Report.)
Intuitively, it appears like generation is progressing faster than ever. But is it certainly? According to Ray Kurzweil—sure, it actually is. In his ebook The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil suggests generation’s quickening tempo and explains the pressure behind all of it.This article will discover Kurzweil’s clarification of this riding pressure, which he dubbed the law of accelerating returns, and the surprising implications of generation’s acceleration.
Moore’s Law is famous—however it isn’t special
Computer chips have turn out to be increasingly effective even as costing much less. That’s because over the last 5 many years the quantity of transistors—or the tiny electrical components that carry out fundamental operations—on a unmarried chip have been doubling often.
This exponential doubling, called Moore’s Law, is the reason a contemporary smartphone cheaply packs so much dizzying capability into one of these small package. [Moore’s Law might be nearing certain physical limitations that will be challenging to overcome. Go at this time to learn how broad exponential growth in computing can continue.]
The technological development in computer chips is widely recognized—however particularly, it isn’t a unique case. A variety of other technology display comparable exponential growth, whether bits of records stored or DNA base pairs recorded. The outcome is the identical: capabilities have expanded by means of lots, hundreds of thousands, and billions for less cost in just a long time.
The above charts display a few examples of increasing technologies, however more examples are plentiful. These do now not directly depend on the doubling of transistor counts—and yet each one actions along its personal exponential curve just as laptop chips do.
According to the law of increasing returns, the pace of technological development—specially statistics technology—speeds up exponentially through the years because there is a not unusual pressure using it forward. Being exponential, as it seems, is all approximately evolution.
Technology is an evolutionary manner
Let’s start with biology, a acquainted evolutionary procedure.
Biology hones herbal “technology,” so to speak. Recorded within the DNA of living matters are blueprints of useful gear called genes. Due to selective strain—or “survival of the fittest”—wonderful improvements are surpassed alongside to offspring.
As this technique plays out generation after technology over geological timescales, chaotically yet incrementally, super increase takes region. By constructing on genetic progress instead of beginning over, organisms have expanded in complexity and functionality over the years. This progressive energy is obvious nearly everywhere we look on Earth today.
“Evolution applies high-quality comments,” Kurzweil writes. “The greater capable techniques on account of one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the following degree.”
Biology’s many innovations include cells, bones, eyes, thumbs, brains—and from thumbs and brains, technology. According to Kurzweil, era is also an evolutionary method, like biology, handiest it actions from one invention to the next a good deal faster.
Civilizations improve with the aid of “repurposing” the ideas and breakthroughs of their predecessors. Similarly, every technology of generation builds on the advances of previous generations, and this creates a nice comments loop of enhancements. Kurzweil’s large idea is that each new generation of era stands at the shoulders of its predecessors—in this manner, enhancements in era permit the subsequent generation of even better generation.
Technological evolution quickens exponentially
Because each technology of era improves over the last, the charge of development from model to version hurries up.
To see this, imagine creating a chair with hand tools, power equipment, and finally assembly strains. Production receives faster after each step. Now believe every era of those equipment is also used to design and build better tools. Kurzweil suggests this type of system is at play inside the layout of ever-quicker pc chips with the software program 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 running out many details of the next era’s layout, and are then produced in absolutely computerized factories with handiest constrained human intervention.” – Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near
This acceleration may be measured in the “returns” of the technology—along with speed, performance, charge-overall performance, and universal “power”—which improve exponentially too.
Further, as a generation turns into extra effective, it draws greater interest. The result is a flood of recent assets—which includes improved R&D budgets, recruiting pinnacle talent, etc.—which might be directed to similarly improving the generation.
This wave of new resources triggers a “2d level” of exponential boom, wherein the fee of exponential increase (the exponent) additionally starts accelerating. However, specific paradigms (e.G., included circuits) gained’t develop exponentially all the time. They develop until they’ve exhausted their ability, at which factor a new paradigm replaces the antique one.
.jpg)
