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Big Idea: Technology Grows Exponentially
The doubling of computer processing speed every 18 months, known as Moore's Law, is just one manifestation of the greater trend that all technological change occurs at an exponential rate.
What's the Big Idea?
The doubling of computer processing speed every 18 months, known as Moore's Law, is just one manifestation of the greater trend that all technological change occurs at an exponential rate.
Why Is It Groundbreaking?
For the vast majority of human existence, it was safe to assume that the world in which you died would look pretty much the same as the one in which you were born. But that is no longer the case—and pretty soon humans won't even die at all, says futurist Ray Kurzweil. "We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate)," wrote Kurzweil in 2001. Just think about how much things have changed in the past 10 years—wireless internet, smart phones, Facebook and Twitter—and then try to imagine how vastly different things will be in 2021, or even 2100.
Scores have criticized Kurzweil's prediction that the Singularity (the technological event horizon beyond which our human imaginations can't even fathom–think androids, immortality, and interstellar travel) will occur in 2045. It rests on the very shaky assumption that Moore's Law will continue to hold true, they say. Big Think's own blogger Michio Kaku has said that at some point silicon transistors will simply be unable to get any smaller or faster.
But according to Kurzweil, Moore's Law of Integrated Circuits is the fifth in a series of paradigms of exponential computing processing growth. And the previous four paradigms—"from the mechanical calculating devices used in the 1890 U.S. Census, to Turing’s relay-based 'Robinson' machine that cracked the Nazi enigma code, to the CBS vacuum tube computer that predicted the election of Eisenhower, to the transistor-based machines used in the first space launches"—all operated under this same underlying principle, writes Kurzweil. In other words, even if scientists do hit a wall with silicon-based circuits, something will emerge to take its place.
Why Should You Care?
Consider the tremendous power of the exponential growth of computers: "When I was an undergraduate, we all shared a computer at MIT that took up half of a building," says Kurzweil. "The computer in your cellphone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. That’s a billion fold increase in price performance of computing since I was an undergraduate." Now apply that same dramatic increase to other fields that depend on information technology:
What Can You Do?
"If you look at the implications of exponential growth, it creates a very different picture of the future and it’s not intuitive," says Kurzweil. Problems that may seem intractable now could become eminently solvable in the near future. Not only should this inform investing and planning for the future, it should also change what you think of as possible for humanity. Soon, things which we could barely have imagined decades before might be within reach.
Learn More
—Ray Kurzweil Explains the Coming Singularity
—When I Am a Robot, How Will I Have Sex?
Stand up against religious discrimination – even if it’s not your religion
As religious diversity increases in the United States, we must learn to channel religious identity into interfaith cooperation.
- Religious diversity is the norm in American life, and that diversity is only increasing, says Eboo Patel.
- Using the most painful moment of his life as a lesson, Eboo Patel explains why it's crucial to be positive and proactive about engaging religious identity towards interfaith cooperation.
- The opinions expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charles Koch Foundation, which encourages the expression of diverse viewpoints within a culture of civil discourse and mutual respect.
NASA's idea for making food from thin air just became a reality — it could feed billions
Here's why you might eat greenhouse gases in the future.
- The company's protein powder, "Solein," is similar in form and taste to wheat flour.
- Based on a concept developed by NASA, the product has wide potential as a carbon-neutral source of protein.
- The man-made "meat" industry just got even more interesting.
Where the evidence of fake news is really hiding
When it comes to sniffing out whether a source is credible or not, even journalists can sometimes take the wrong approach.
- We all think that we're competent consumers of news media, but the research shows that even journalists struggle with identifying fact from fiction.
- When judging whether a piece of media is true or not, most of us focus too much on the source itself. Knowledge has a context, and it's important to look at that context when trying to validate a source.
- The opinions expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charles Koch Foundation, which encourages the expression of diverse viewpoints within a culture of civil discourse and mutual respect.
