27 July 2009

Exponentials Everywhere ~ Kevin Kelly's Technium

Nice piece by Kevin Kelly on Was Moore's Law Inevitable? posted in his The Technium live-book-in-progress pages on exponentials everywhere...
"Moore's Law is one [...] There must be others. [...] But we've learned to look for them. Searching, we can see similar laws peeking out now. These "laws" are reflexes of the technium that kick in regardless of the social climate. They too will spawn progress, and inspire new powers and new desires as they unroll in ordered sequence. Perhaps these self-governing dynamics will appear in genetics, or in pharmaceuticals, or in cognition. Once a dynamic like Moore's Law is launched and made visible, the fuels of finance, competition, and markets will push the law to its limits and keep it riding along that curve until it has consumed its physical potential."
Just a sampling of three compelling exponentials, these drawn from Kurzweil and Christensen respectively...

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