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The rate of change in computer technology has been orders of magnitudes faster than most other technologies. Consider transport. Millennia ago, before the dome
by Zak 1y ago
The rate of change in computer technology has been orders of magnitudes faster than most other technologies.
Consider transport. Millennia ago, before the domestication of the horse, the fastest a human could travel was by running. That's a peak of about 45 km/h, but around 20 km/h sustained over a long distance for the fastest modern humans; it was probably a bit less then. Now that's about 900 km/h for commercial airplanes (45x faster) or 3500 km/h for the fastest military aircraft ever put in service (178x faster). Space travel is faster still, but so rarely used for practical transport I think we can ignore it here.
My current laptop, made in 2022 is thousands of times faster than my first laptop, made in 1992. It has about 8000 times as much memory. Its network bandwidth is over 4000 times as much. There are few fields where the magnitude of human technology has shifted by such large amounts in any amount of time, much less a fraction of a human lifespan.