So Ray Kurzweil finished off the Wednesday Keynote. He has been monitoring and making predictions on a variety of things. He’s got some good views into what’s happening.
- First and foremost, almost all the growth curves are not linear. Our growth curve follows a doubling.
- MIT’s first computer was the size of a building and had 32K RAM. Our current smartphones are a million time smaller and a thousand times more powerful
- The miniaturization trend will continue. We will see the nano-revolution take off.
- The cost per MIP will continue decreasing logarithmically.
- Internet growth doubled every year since it’s inception. that doubling seemed like it came from nowhere but Ray predicted a true world wide phenomenon for the internet
- Labor productivity is up from $30 to $130
- Photovoltaic production is up over 10,000X since 1975. It’s doubling every two years
- Average life expectancy has increased from 25 years in ancient Egypt to 78 in 2002. He predicts adding more than a year of life expectancy per year in about 15 years. (yes, that’s what he said)
- Bottom line: The changes are going to impact almost every aspect of our lives. The application of technology, not just computer technology really continues to growth in it’s ability to impact and that growth is not linear.
