I believe that a good explanation for doubling speed is provided by Kurzweil’s suggestion that he calls The Law of Accelerating Returns (http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns), basically meaning that whatever is invented/evolved in a system is fed back into the system and increases the over-all speed of invention/evolution, leading mathematically to exponential growth of speed.
Another basic principle in the universe seems to be self-organization, which has led to evolution of life and intelligence. And from a broad outside perspective, human intelligence is now part of a self-organizing system where technology is evolved. At every phase, the speed of evolution follows an s-curve with a slow start, an exponential increase in speed and a slow-down due to some natural limitation. The overall exponential growth consists of several such s-curves put together. Biological life is at its end of its s-curve. What we know as technology is taking over (both those phenomena consist in turn of lots of s-curves put together). I think that it would be a little bit presumptuous to believe that: - human intelligence is the highest possible form of intelligence. - humans could possibly understand the absolute limits of computation or future similar phenomena. I can see no reason to believe that doubling speed would cease in an imaginable future. We’re just a piece of the puzzle. Mats --- Mats Lewan<http://www.matslewan.se/>, Senior staff writer Ny Teknik<http://www.nyteknik.se/>, Digital Teknik. Managing Editor Next Magasin<http://www.nextmagasin.se/>. Phone: +46-8-796 64 10, Cellular: +46-70-590 72 52, Twitter: matslew<http://twitter.com/matslew> Jed Rothwell wrote: The fastest data processing in the known universe, by a wide margin, is biological cell reproduction. The entire genome is copied by every cell that splits. This is a parallel process. The moment a strand of DNA is exposed to solution, all of new bases begin match up simultaneously. DNA is also by far the most compact form of data storage in the known universe, and I predict is the most compact that will ever be found. I do not think subatomic data storage will ever be possible. All the human data now existing can be stored in about 7 ml of DNA. - Jed
