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link Was Moore's Law Inevitable?

In the early 1950s the same thought occurred to many people at once: things are improving so fast and so regularly, there might be a pattern to the improvements. Maybe we could plot technological progress to date, then extrapolate the curves and see what the future holds. Among the first to do this systemically was the US Air Force. They needed a long-term schedule of what kinds of planes they should be funding, but aerospace was one of the fastest moving frontiers in technology. Obviously they would build the fastest planes possible, but since it took decades to design, approve, and then deliver a new type of plane, the generals thought it prudent to glimpse what futuristic technologies they should be funding.

6 months ago

September 1, 2009
m oores law kevin kelly the technium singularity learning curve kurzweil law of accelerating returns exponential
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Integral Singularity

Moses Silbiger & Ken Wilber

Video Games and the Future of Interactive Entertainment. Part 2. The Singularity: Rupture or Rapture?

Moses and Ken talk about the approaching technological Singularity, as popularized by Ray Kurzweil, discussing the need for an equivalent Singularity in both consciousness and culture….

According to Moore’s Law, computational power is doubling every 18 months.  Which means that the year 2000 marked 32 consecutive doublings since the invention of the transistor, while 2006 marked 32 doublings since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958.  We are now living on the second half of the chessboard—and from here on out, things get really crazy.  Turing-approved artificial intelligence, cyborg brain/computer interfaces, nanotechnology, even the possibility of uploading consciousness to digital substrate—all of this “post-human” technology is now becoming increasingly feasible, and there is a very good chance we could see this (and more) achieved within most of our lifetimes. (+read more)

1 year ago

September 10, 2008
integral singularity ken wilber kurzweil
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Solar now cheaper than coal!

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/29/solarpower.renewableenergy

“Figures released yesterday by the Earth Policy Institute in Washington showed that solar electricity generation was now the fastest-growing electricity source, doubling its output every two years. It is now attracting government and venture capital money on an unprecedented scale.”

“This is the world’s lowest-cost solar panel, which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as 99 cents a watt,” said Roscheisen yesterday.”



PopSci awarded nanosolar as the most innovative product of 2007.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/green/item_59.html

Further, these exponential doubling trends not only occur in solar/renewables, but hard drive storage and compression technology, computer processing speed, LED lighting, etc…


 …known resources” are not given by nature; they depend on the analytical capacities of the human mind. We can never know how many resources can be obtained from a cubic foot of the universe: all we know is how much we have found thus far, at a given date. You can starve in the middle of a field of wheat if your mind hasn’t identified wheat as edible. Real Wealth results from Real Knowledge, which is increasing faster all the time. - Robert Anton Wilson.

1 year ago

July 26, 2008
nanosolar robert anton wilson kurzweil maybe logic optimism law of accelerating returns
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