It quickly became clear, however, that such a prize was far greater than he had anticipated. After thirty-two squares, only halfway up the board, the game ’s architect had earned 4 billion grains of rice. While a large number, that was still only equivalent to the amount produced by a large field, and this only served to place the inventor in even higher esteem – after all, a field or two of rice was a perfectly satisfactory reward for such a captivating game. That was to change, though, when by the final square the tally was 18 quintillion grains of rice, a pile larger than Mount Everest and more rice than had been produced in history. The Emperor, enraged by the temerity of a subject who had asked for more wealth than even he could ever ofer, ordered the inventor to be executed.
This allegory captures the swift, and often unexpected, dividends of exponential growth, especially compared to linear forms of progress which the human mind is far more inclined to expect. So what happens when such prodigious growth occurs in human afairs? The answer can be found in the history of computing over the last half a century.
In 1965 Gordon Moore, who would later co-found Intel, wrote an article for Electronics Magazine detailing recent improvements in the performance of computer chips. At that time the most complex circuit still only had around thirty components, but progress appeared to be accelerating. In fact, Moore observed that the recent rate of development had been so rapid that the number of transistors that could fit on a circuit had doubled every year since 1959. That discovery got him thinking. What would happen if that same trend, of annual doubling, prevailed for another decade?
After some quick calculations, Moore was shocked by the answer. His forecasts showed that by the end of 1975 the average circuit would have gone from having thirty transistors to 65,000. Moore speculated about the kinds of technology such mesmerising advance could make possible, contemplating a world with ‘portable communications equipment’, ‘home computing’ and perhaps even ‘automatic controls for automobiles’. Unfortunately for Moore, his prediction proved wildly inaccurate. The trend he outlined didn’t persist for another ten years – it’s been going for a half century and counting.
42
chaos under heaven