The Future Is Exponential
from the looking-good... dept
If you're a raging optimist, here's one for you. Ray Kurzweil has written (not surprisingly) a bunch of very optimistic predictions for the future. I hope he's right. His point is that many people underestimate the rate of future advance, because technological progress grows at an exponential rate, while most of us expect it to grow at a linear rate. It's a very good point (a quick look at history can support that to some extent). However, I'm still not exactly clear on why he thinks he can read those exponential trends so well. However, he does predict that by 2009 we'll do away with PCs altogether, and everyone will have a "wearable" computer as part of their body with the data being beamed directly onto our retinas. I can't wait.
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Wow, that's optimistic!
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Re: Wow, that's optimistic!
However, saying this it doesn't seem unfeasible for growth to continue for the foresable future exponentially (at least within our life times), assuming that as one growth inducing technology starts to taper off another one enters the exponential phase.
Umm... okay did that make any sense to anyone else? Or have I just come out looking like an optimist again, sh*t!
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Re: Wow, that's optimistic!
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