Technology and Transition

[img]http://media1.picsearch.com/is?MEWJ_SM6S1XWy-3Ry5umtcslCSK9kuNALzR1al9C9W0 uptake of the radio and TV took decades; uptake of the computer and mobile phones took years. The kitsch and yet astonishing comparison that is usually trotted out in conversations like this is that there is over 100 times more computing power in our smart phone than there was in the Apollo Space Program.

Each time we reach the capacity of one technology, a new one appears that takes the technology to the next level. Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors, which were replaced by chips, which will probably be replaced by 3 dimensional self-organising molecular circuits or perhaps even quantum computers.

I very much like the observation by Ray Kurzweil in his TED talk[3] that this exponential growth is the result of worldwide chaotic behaviour and when we view it from a distance we see the pattern and the trend.

I also like the observation from the same talk that while we cannot predict the behaviour of a single molecule we can predict the behaviour of gasses. While we cannot predict the behaviour of an individual, we can predict the behaviour of crowds. This, combined with Philip Rosenthal