On The Inevitability Of Exponential Progress In Technology

from the it's-how-growth-works dept

Kevin Kelly has written up yet another must read discussion -- this one looking into the inevitability of Moore's Law. In it, he looks not just at Moore's Law, but how a variety of different technologies have all found similar "laws" where they get better/smaller/cheaper/faster at an exponential rate, at a pace that sticks so closely to an observed curve as to seem predetermined by fate. DNA sequencing, magnetic storage, semiconductors, bandwidth, pixel density all seem to follow this same thing, and Kelly notes that each case is separate. While some may influence others, it's not a case where one is dependent on another.

He notes that this certainly doesn't apply to all technologies -- but it does seem to be limited to technologies that scale down at microscopic sizes, rather than technologies that scale up (i.e., improvements to airplane or automobile technology aren't seeing any such rate of change). His argument is that this is due to energy requirements. Scaling up requires more energy, which greatly limits growth. But scaling down does not.

But where this gets most interesting is that, the more Kelly explores the issue, the more convinced he is (and he makes a compelling case) that this sort of technological progress is pretty much inevitable. It can be slowed down by bad policy, but it can't be stopped. And, what's most compelling to me is that this sort of progress isn't dependent on anything like patents. It's happening no matter what. The advancement of technology happens for a variety of reasons, little of which has to do with "protecting" the ideas. In fact, within that "protection" there's little benefit.

Everyone recognizes these curves and where they're headed, and how following along the path of that curve creates so many off-shoot benefits (what some might call externalities), that the idea of hoarding a concept or an idea is actually counterproductive. The benefits to staying on the curve in some way or another are so great that people implicitly recognize that helping others (even competitors) keep everyone on the curve isn't a bad thing -- but in many cases a very good thing. That's because everyone is better off, and the opportunities increase across the board as you stay on such a curve. And, in fact, this is where all that research on noncompetes comes in. While it's rarely official company policy (they all still talk up patents and trade secrets and such), it's quite common when there are issues in getting to that next level, engineers start sharing ideas or more importantly jump ship from company to company, so the ideas get spread that way. Advancement continues, and the world is better off -- not because of patents, but because of a more free flow of information.

Kelly doesn't get into that aspect of the discussion -- focusing just on the inevitability of the growth rate -- but it's a key point. Notice that none of what he's discussing really involves some major breakthrough discovery or some brilliant invention. There are lots of breakthroughs and lots of brilliant people involved, of course, but they're all progressing in the direction where they need to go. One may get there first, but that's hardly the breakthrough. Lots of others are all progressing along those same lines. The progress isn't driven by patents, but by the technology itself and the massive opportunity its advancement creates. In many ways this relates back to our discussion of how, throughout history, nearly every major scientific "breakthrough" has occurred to multiple independent people at almost the exact same time. It's the natural progress of applying ideas to problems, and following where the technology allows you to go.

As such, there's an argument to be made that patents get in the way of this sort of progress. Since much of the progress is, in fact, a progression, rather than a "breakthrough," and it's done by a variety of different people (or teams of people), everyone is actually better off not in limiting that progress by holding back an idea or requiring a tollbooth to be a part of the process, but in lowering the barriers to it, and letting that true pace of advancement quicken.

Filed Under: economics, inevitability, kevin kelly, moore's law

Moore's Law: Dead Again, According To The Press

from the haven't-we-heard-this-before dept

Every couple years or so, the press goes nuts, after some renowned chiphead says something along the lines that "Moore's Law" is dying. But then you look at the details and it's all rather meaningless. So... with reports coming out, yet again, that someone is claiming that Moore's Law is reaching its end, there's still little to worry about. First of all, Moore's Law was always more a rule of thumb (and has been defined multiple different ways by Moore himself). The definition that many people attribute to Moore has never really been accurate, anyway. But even the guy quoted in this article notes that we'll just move on to somewhat different technologies to continue the inevitable march forward to more and more powerful computer chips. So, once again, it seems that the death of Moore's Law isn't nearly as big a deal as it's been made out to be.

Filed Under: moore's law

The Death Of Moore's Law Is Greatly Exaggerated

from the the-myth-will-live-on dept

Every so often, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore shows up for an interview, and it's only a matter of time before someone asks him about Moore's Law, and he says something along the lines of how shrinking chips is going to reach its physical limits at some point. This has actually been going on for some time, but every time it happens, someone gets excited and writes up an article with a headline about the "death of Moore's Law." Do some Google searches on the topic and you'll find hundreds of articles on it starting years ago. The latest such article comes from Extremetech, claiming that Moore Sees 'Moore's Law' Dead in a Decade, as if that's something new. Go back a few years, and you can find nearly identical articles. However, the larger point is that it doesn't matter.

There are a few reasons for this. First of all, Moore's Law isn't what most people seem to think it is. It's not (and never has been) a "law." Even worse, what it means and how people interpret it has continued to change over time. In fact, even Moore himself hasn't been consistent about what it means -- and the parts most often attributed to Moore aren't accurate at all. In fact, this latest article, from ExtremeTech gets the basic facts wrong, saying that originally Moore's Law was about the number of transistors on a chip doubling every 18 months and it was later pushed back to two years. Actually, the original statement from Moore was about doubling every 12 months, and he was the one who later revised it to two years. At some point, others seemed to average the two and say it was 18 months. The more important point, however, is that it doesn't really matter. The specifics of Moore's Law have long since lost their significance, and its true importance today is simply as a shorthand way of saying that technology gets better and cheaper at a rather rapid pace -- and that's likely to continue for quite some time whether or not chip makers figure out how to squeeze more transistors onto a chip or not.

Filed Under: gordon moore, moore's law