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> technological progress follows an exponential curve This is a mantra that I keep hearing, but if I compare the progress from 1900 to 1960 and then from 1960

> technological progress follows an exponential curve This is a mantra that I keep hearing, but if I compare the progress from 1900 to 1960 and then from 1960 to 2020, it almost seems like it has been flattening... Sure, we have internet and fancy computers, but the progress from 1900 to 1960 was immense: air travel, electrification, proliferation of automobiles, immense progress in medicine, space exploration, nuclear energy. Even the MOSFET transistor was invented in 1959. Not saying there wasn't any progress between 1960 and 2020, but it sure doesn't look "accelerating"...

wmf 6y ago
He's just talking about performance, not qualitative progress.
goatlover 6y ago
He’s rehashing Kurzweil’s analysis of history, which is to broadly fit a few data points to show that exponential growth is baked into the universe. And then go in to claim that the next 100 years is going to be something 20,000 years of 20th century progress. But I don’t see that the 2000s are progressing any faster than the 80s and 90s. It looks fairly linear since the 50s or 60s overall. smartphones and Deep Learning are incremental progress over what existed before.
- bick_nyers 6y ago
  Well, it's hard to view an exponential when you are on it, because the time steps are so small, it can feel linear. As a 24 year old, I can see the effects of internet+smartphones has on people my age. We navigate information so much more efficiently than older generations, not just from technical skill, but from the standpoint of how we frame mental models, ask questions, etc. The early 1900's were a revolution on atoms, and the past couple decades were a revolution on information. It is harder to see and measure in general, especially when we are still in the thick of it.
  - goatlover 6y ago
    While smartphones certainly are a boon to quickly navigating information and accessing lots of ideas, PCs did that for people in the 80s and 90s to an extent, and the internet has its roots in networked computers across universities and other institutions in the 60s. Incremental improvement means that overall what we have today is just a few decades worth of steady improvement in hardware and software from the initial implementations. And while the culmination of the computing revolution today is disruptive, compare that to how many technologies and sciences were undergoing disruption in the late 19th century through the mid 20th. Of course computer hardware lends itself well to exponential gains, but it's less clear how many other things have done so over the past several decades, including software, which seems to be a bit more linear in its improvement. The hardware today is vastly more powerful, but the software often does not take full advantage of it.

wmf 6y ago

He's just talking about performance, not qualitative progress.

goatlover 6y ago

He’s rehashing Kurzweil’s analysis of history, which is to broadly fit a few data points to show that exponential growth is baked into the universe. And then go in to claim that the next 100 years is going to be something 20,000 years of 20th century progress. But I don’t see that the 2000s are progressing any faster than the 80s and 90s. It looks fairly linear since the 50s or 60s overall. smartphones and Deep Learning are incremental progress over what existed before.

bick_nyers 6y ago
Well, it's hard to view an exponential when you are on it, because the time steps are so small, it can feel linear. As a 24 year old, I can see the effects of internet+smartphones has on people my age. We navigate information so much more efficiently than older generations, not just from technical skill, but from the standpoint of how we frame mental models, ask questions, etc. The early 1900's were a revolution on atoms, and the past couple decades were a revolution on information. It is harder to see and measure in general, especially when we are still in the thick of it.
- goatlover 6y ago
  While smartphones certainly are a boon to quickly navigating information and accessing lots of ideas, PCs did that for people in the 80s and 90s to an extent, and the internet has its roots in networked computers across universities and other institutions in the 60s. Incremental improvement means that overall what we have today is just a few decades worth of steady improvement in hardware and software from the initial implementations. And while the culmination of the computing revolution today is disruptive, compare that to how many technologies and sciences were undergoing disruption in the late 19th century through the mid 20th. Of course computer hardware lends itself well to exponential gains, but it's less clear how many other things have done so over the past several decades, including software, which seems to be a bit more linear in its improvement. The hardware today is vastly more powerful, but the software often does not take full advantage of it.