When The Chips are Down

Back around 1994, I read in a science magazine article, that the computer chip was coming to it's end. The ability of manufacturing at photon width had reached it's limits, and the progress that we had experienced over the past 36 years in chip development would cease; hmmmmmm now 18 years later, I am hearing the same old song and dance, about the computer chip, only with a few twists; Moore's Law is going to come to an end, in less than 10 years, and that chips will be so easily produced at that time, they will be worth only pennies.

Seems that the predictions are at odds with themselves. So let's break it down a bit. Moore's Law first. What is it??

From the Wikipedia article: Moore's law is a rule of thumb in the history of computing hardware whereby the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. The period often quoted as "18 months" is due to Intel executive David House, who predicted that period for a doubling in chip performance (being a combination of the effect of more transistors and their being faster).[1]

The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper.[2][3][4] The paper noted that the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 until 1965 and predicted that the trend would continue "for at least ten years".[5] His prediction has proved to be uncannily accurate, in part because the law is now used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development.[6]


and I (Schnee Wolfe) would hazard a guess that Moore's Law is also responsible for the huge advances in other technologies, like energy production, cell phones, medicine, rocketry, and auto mobiles, almost anything you can name. The background noise of change is advancing at greater than the 5 year doubling that was predicted when I left school in 1968. Society is keeping up JUST, but for how long is anyone's guess. Our institutions are creaking, and our banking and governmental bodies are struggling to keep up. The leaders of today are creating laws and regulations for the present, based on the past, and as soon as they are set on paper, before being voted on, are obsolete. Technology has superseded them. 



They are predicting that around 2020, the ability to double the performance of the Integrated Circuit will have hit a road block. No explanation, just a flat out statement. They, being the futurologists / scientists of today. My own thoughts on this, let's wait and see. My experience has lead me to believe that in 3 years, there will be a new "break through" that someone is working on even as I write this. Break throughs are no longer a surprise, but are the norm. The only True Technological Break Through, is when a totally NEW technology is perfected, as in say Fusion Power, or a Warp Drive. The rest is convergence and tweaking of existing technologies.


But at the same time as there is the prediction of the end of the computer chip, they are predicting that Integrated Circuits will be everywhere, as ubiquitous as electricity is today. Also that with this "everywhere, and no where" experience, there will be such convergence and exponential growth in the use of computing power, we will be able to experience the world as never before. Chips (IC units) will be the new scrap paper. A new throw away society?? Technology at the snap of our fingers, or the whisper of a word, the wink of an eye. New and wide spread energy sources, along with an era of Abundance, never before known to humanity, as a whole. Disease eradicated by the middle of the century, and an egalitarian society, for all, where humans and robots will mingle together as equals. MIT has even predicted that by the turn of the mid century, humans and robots may even be marrying or at least living common law.

We are moving from a Man Made Society to a Robot Made Society, where the last usefulness of humanity over robots and computers, will have been reached, (for now). The art of creation, imagination and ingenuity. The big question in the minds of futurologists, "Will this usher in an era of Utopian wealth and ease for all of humanity, or a Dystopia where only a few are able to take advantage, and the majority are relegated to a sub human existence.