The doubling time for Moore's law, 1.5 years, is just one of many technologies that underwent exponential growth for awhile, just like the automotive industry from 1890 to 1920. If it weren't for the limits of physics, we should have cars today that travel faster than light and cost less than a dollar. We saw similar predictions for nuclear power and space travel in the 1950s. Now transistors are at the limits of physics, and other technologies like genomics are growing exponentially, like all innovations do in the early stages.
The overall effect of many different technologies is centuries of economic growth (relative to the price of food) at 2-3% per year, or a doubling time of 25-30 years. Any trend on a shorter time scale won't make reliable predictions beyond that scale. For now we can look forward to life expectancy increasing at 20% (0.2 years per year), declining population in developed countries as more people live alone, more government control while feeling more free, more economic inequality even as the poor get richer, open borders, abolition of arrests and prisons (but not crime), and the disappearance of cash and non synthetic meat. We are at the transition of technology connecting us to isolating us as we interact more with AI and less with other people. Large events, stadiums, theaters, and shopping centers will disappear, along with all forms of mass entertainment, shows and music, in favor of private virtual worlds with private languages in our smart homes served by self driving delivery carts. Beyond the next century, the most persistent trend is the chaotic nature of evolution, punctuated by mass extinctions and rapid replacement with new species, events that form the boundaries of geologic eras. We are in one now, very close to replacing DNA based life with something more efficient. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T4ad5d8c386d0e116-M458bdea2d94ca3500c26b422 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
