[1st-mile-nm] Exponential technological progress

[Carroll Cagle]

  By Ray Kurzweil

Washington Post

Sunday, April 13, 2008

M IT was so advanced in 1965 (the year I entered as a freshman) that it
actually had a computer. Housed in its own building, it cost $11 million (in
today's dollars) and was shared by all students and faculty. Four decades
later, the computer in your cellphone is a million times smaller, a million
times less expensive and a thousand times more powerful. That's a
billion-fold increase in the amount of computation you can buy per dollar. 

Yet as powerful as information technology is today, we will make another
billion-fold increase in capability (for the same cost) over the next 25
years. That's because information technology builds on itself -- we are
continually using the latest tools to create the next so they grow in
capability at an exponential rate. This doesn't just mean snazzier
cellphones. It means that change will rock every aspect of our world. The
exponential growth in computing speed will unlock a solution to global
warming, unmask the secret to longer life and solve myriad other worldly
conundrums. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103
326.html

 

 

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