The Curve of the Modern World

This curve of accelerated change is driving us towards a more digital, dematerialized, and democratized world, notably via computation and high-speed networks. Two things are important to note:

First, this process didn’t begin only 50 years ago. On the contrary, with his Law of Accelerating Returns (LOAR), Ray Kurzweil realized that it actually began generations ago with the earliest computers, which were powered first by mechanical systems, then relays, and then vacuum tubes. It’s just that the early stages of exponential growth are deceptively slow. Double a small number like 0.01 to 0.02, 0.04, 0.08, and so on, and it still looks like zero.

This is what Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler describe as the “deceptive phase” of exponential growth in their book Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World. They note that the doubling of small numbers (as shown above) seems unimpressive to the casual outside observer. But later, as the doubling continues, it transforms everything. If you double something thirty times, it ends up more than a billion times bigger, what Peter refers to as the disruptive phase. And, as we shall soon see, the digitization of products and services ultimately results in the dematerialization, democratization, and democratization of those products and services.

Only in retrospect did we recognize that the explosion of new inventions at the beginning of the 20th century was an augury of things to come. In other words, this exponential process has been going on for a long time, and we are now at the point on the curve where each increment is massive, with even more ahead.

Gordon Moore recognized that, between 1958 and 1965, the number of transistors on Intel’s integrated chips doubled every 12 to 18 months while the costs involved halved—an observation that would come to be known as “Moore’s Law.” But even Moore didn’t imagine that those little silicon chips, each bearing dozens to hundreds of transistors, would, in time, each carry trillions of transistors. Frankly, he couldn’t imagine that because it was beyond human imagination and beyond our understanding of physics: it was a number too great for the human mind to comprehend. Moore assumed that at some point, his curve would have to run into some physical barrier and flatten, and the current era of exponential transformation would end.

But it didn’t end. And it hasn’t ended. And, given the extraordinary efforts of human ingenuity over several generations of scientists, it is likely to continue for many decades. Today’s microprocessor chips bear little resemblance to those memory chips of the early 1960s: the design, materials, software, and myriad other characteristics have changed radically. And with the recent rise of quantum and photonic computing and other new architectures, further radical change is all but guaranteed. 

Source: Ray Kurzweil, updated since 2008 by Steve Jurvetson 

Which brings us to our second point: If you are counting on all of this change to slow in your lifetime, you are probably making a very big mistake. Indeed, change is accelerating.

And that’s just the beginning because exponential growth is no longer confined to the world of technology. Indeed, it hasn’t been for a long time. Tech has long since invaded and transformed the world of business, non-profits, defense, finance, consumer products, and, most important of all, daily life. It began quietly: the mainframe computer down the hall handling payroll, digital readouts showing up in airplane cockpits, a processor in your car’s fuel-injection system, a calculator on your desk, etc.

Look around you. More than 30 billion processors are currently in use in the world, containing as many transistors as the number of raindrops that fall on the Earth each year. They are embedded in every corner of our daily lives, growing smarter, more connected, and more capable by the year. All that has happened in less than a single lifetime. Now, imagine change on that scale occurring in a single year. Next year. Then again in the following six months, along a wide front, from medicine to education to space exploration to transportation and communications. As Peter, Ray, and others have noted, we’ll experience more progress in the next decade (2023–2033) than we saw in the past century (1923–2023).

There’s more. Waiting in the wings is a long list of game-changers: artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data, quantum technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, mobile medical monitoring and diagnosis, the extended human healthspan, hypersonic travel, and the colonization of space, to name just a few. Each of these has the potential to create a massive disruption in the patterns of our daily lives (and to create new, trillion-dollar industries in the process). Salim Ismail talks about this as “20 Gutenberg Moments,” referencing the dramatic transformation created by the printing press in the 15th century. Today, solar energy will have that same impact. But so will blockchain. So will AI, and CRISPR, and passenger drones, and life extension. And so on.