The consequences of exponential technological growth.

The meaning here is a metaphor, but still the word exponential and not linear is used here to give an idea of how fast the technological developments are taking place.

Today, in a world with the urge by companies to make a profit or government contactors to come up with new applications and technologies to defeat the enemy I think it is save to say that this "exponential" growth is occuring in all fields of science.

But what does that mean for "we the people"?

A new product developed by a company has no time to earn back its research and development costs...unless a 5$ product is sold for 1000$? With this I mean the next improved product is already made before the previous has paid the wages of the employees working on it.

What about the more advanced "government" stuff..where money is no issue? Can it be there is a place simular to Warehouse 13 with shelves loaded with stuff we are not "ready" for or regarded useless because the next new thing "in the field" is better? IMHO it must be, if we are talking about a positive technological exponential growth.

And for the conspiracy part...

Things get weirder over time because developments increase. How steep is the learning/development curve in 2012, what was it in 1947.... can it be that there is a group of people having exclusive acces to these "off the shelve" technologies..... has this something to do with the break-away society Richard Dolan is talking about?

Just give the exponential technological growth phenomenon a thought..

And yet we all still rely on the 100 year old technology of power lines to provide us electricity.

But I can renew the lease on my apartment from a ship in the middle of the ocean 6,000 miles away.

The tech that is probably available today, would most likely blow our minds. They can keep all that, I just want a laser gun.

Originally posted by zatara
I think it is save to say that this "exponential" growth is occuring in all fields of science.

edit on 11/11/2012 by zatara because: (no reason given)

Do you have some data to substantiate that?

Its doubtful. In some areas yes. Others have stagnated.

Is exponential growth occurring in aviation? In rocketry? In both of those cases you can make the argument that our peak was the 1960s since there were craft fielded in the 60s and 70s that we don't have equivalent to today. I give you the Saturn V rocket and the Concorde SST as 2 examples.

Where is the evidence of exponential growth in energy generation and distribution tech? [crickets].

The areas that are still accelerating are those driven by consumer demand. In particular consumer electronics devices. This is because competition is fierce and ruthless in order to unlock large profits.

Where individual purchasers have direct choice growth will be as you expect. Where the consumer has indirect choice its slower. Where the consumer has no choice and its managed by government, or monopoly cartels growth will stagnate.

The assumption that military tech outpaces civil tech in all areas is false. The cutting edge fighters of the west (f-22, Typhoon) use computing technology that was obsolete on the desktop a decade ago. Military development projects are 'cost plus', theres little real spur to advance fast. You only have to advance faster than the military bureaucracy of your opponents. The big challenge these days is in leveraging commercial advances to the front line.

There will be some niche advanced weapons in hangers i'm sure but i don't subscribe to the breakaway civilisation hypothesis. I think thats wish fulfilment fantasy. Total secrecy doesn't breed accelerated advances, it breeds inefficiency and corruption.

Okay , it's real early in the morning, and it's obvious you have possibly had alot of coffee, and man you guys are really smart, but this needs more data support. The reliance on technology is creepy because to have one thing that drives an entire nation, preoccupies an entire nation, and can easily be stopped leaves the world at risk. Speculation about it's growth and what that means may have much darker and sinister meanings if it were all to suddenly disappear. And yes, we can have a global EMP much easier than we had thought. It's like we have created this huge really fascinating pet but haven;t build the infrastructure to keep it safe from harm. the guy is right, he can do things with technology from a boat in the ocean but the grid is failing. You can;t do anything if you don;t have the grid.

You forget champ that they dont need a global emp when they can simply show up like #ing star trek and say nee how ma....guess what bishes?

Blame Nicola Tesla

BTW In a conversation with a friend just yesterday I explained the dangers of the presently out of control "exponential technological growth" and I compared this rampant "progress" to the Richter scale. This may be seen as a warning that the big one is soon to hit.

In the early 70's when I was an elementary school student, my class viewed a film version of a book whose author explored the potential effects on society (stress and disorientation, mainly) arising from technology that was developing at a faster pace than man's ability to keep up with it.

This book is "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler. I never took the time to read the book, though the message stuck with me all of these years.

Somehow my young adult children are managing to keep up with the flow of developing technology and implementing it effectively in their day-to-day lives, but were it not for them holding me by the hand and helping to drag me along, I don't know how or if I could manage this on my own.

Still, I feel as though this will all implode on us at some point and it will come full circle with us living as pioneers once again. I feel the need to prepare for this eventuality.

reply to post by justwokeup


What you wrote is exactly what it is all about. You want numbers, figures..? If I had any there was no conspiracy or a question about the consequences.

Thanks for your thoughts tho...

Not exactly a new insight, but still a valuable idea. See the works of Fuller, Wilson, and McKenna. (Keyword: "Jumping Jesus Phenomena".) . To paraphrase Fuller, the history of Man is the history of Doing More and More with Less and Less. It's all tied in with the idea that resources are not discovered, they are created -- you can starve to death in a field of wheat if you don't know how how to make flour and bread.

The thing to remember about exponential curves is that no matter WHEN you look at the curve, it ALWAYS looks like you're just in the elbow of the curve right before asymptotic growth. Of course, the difference here is that we're on track to have the sum total of useable human data doubling every nanosecond by the end of the year should exponential trends hold, and that's a startlingly relevant piece of context. And, also, that exponential growth NEVER holds over the long term. (Seriously: If it did, our species would make it to Alpha Centauri in 4400 years... Not in spaceships, mind you, but as a 4.6 lightyear-diameter sphere of writhing humanity.) Exponential growth always hits the limits set by fundamental physical reality. There are ultimate limits to the amount of computation a given system of matter and energy can accomplish in a given hypervolume of spacetime, and that's your final bottleneck for such processes. Practically, you can expect such growth to hit a wall MUCH sooner, as we are limited in our engineering to several orders of magnitude smaller (in terms of computation) or larger (in terms of scale of smallest components) than those limits.

reply to post by Stunspot


That is an interesting answer...What you say is that in the end there is no rapid progress or will stop completely. I asked myself: if given enough time there will be nothing left to learn. That would mean we would have reached the ultimate knowledge of everything there is know.


btw, was there not a moment where scientist reached the end when it came to sizing down sillicon based integrated circuits (chips)?

But still...for as long we have not reached a negative growth choices have to be made for a company to survive the progress. I think that the compact disk and every new sound carrier after that is an excellent example....How long did they keep the DVD on the shelf before releasing it onto the market. Before releasing the DVD they already had developed the Blu-ray?