> if tomorrow morning the world’s great chip companies were to agree to stop advancing the technology, Moore’s Law would be repealed by tomorrow evening, leavin

> if tomorrow morning the world’s great chip companies were to agree to stop advancing the technology, Moore’s Law would be repealed by tomorrow evening, leaving the next few decades with the task of mopping up all of its implications. On the one hand, if this happened, it could be good for putting an end to the routine obsolescence of electronics. Then maybe we could get to the future that bunnie predicted roughly 10 years ago [1], complete with heirloom laptops. On the other hand, ongoing advances in semiconductor technology let us solve real problems -- not just in automation that makes the rich richer, enables mass surveillance, and possibly takes away jobs, but in areas that actually make people's lives better, such as accessibility. If Moore's Law had stopped before the SoC in the iPhone 3GS had been introduced, would we have smartphones with built-in screen readers for blind people? If it had stopped before the Apple A12 in 2018, would the iOS VoiceOver screen reader be able to use on-device machine learning to provide access to apps that weren't designed to be accessible? (Edit: A9-based devices could run iOS 14, but not with this feature.) What new problems will be solved by further advances in semiconductors? I don't know, but I know I shouldn't wish for an end to those advances. I just wish we could have them without ever-increasing software bloat that leads to obsolete hardware. [1]:' https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1927 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1927