It is a great point and one which I expound in some detail in the first two chapters of the book. Things don't have to be 'exponential' to be important. Printi

It is a great point and one which I expound in some detail in the first two chapters of the book. Things don't have to be 'exponential' to be important. Printing press, wheel being two other good examples. Square-rigged sails as well! However, a number of aspects of our economies are not sufficiently configured to enable a kind of phase change in interactions between entities in our economies. And one of those is enabling the rapid development of a whole suite of technologies (outside traditional tech), and those technologies good well be candidates for general purpose technologies, which in turn maginifies the impacts they might have.