I last published an update to my book on Moore’s Law in 2021.
Bad news. It’s obsolete.
I didn’t do a bad job. I even pointed toward some important future trends like the end of oil and DNA editing. But there’s a lot that I missed and that’s inevitable. As I begin work on a new edition, it’s important to note how these recent changes have impacted society.
The End of Writing – TikTok, Reels, and podcasts have combined to make writing quaint, if not obsolete. Writing is hard. It takes time. The result, however, is efficient. Writing can pack a big punch in a short amount of reader’s time.
But it’s now quicker to create a video or just chat someone up on a microphone and post that. This has had profound implications for how we communicate. More time is spent on the reading side, less on the creating side. The audience must do more of the work in the content space, which often means less real communication is going on.
The Rise of AI – I had nothing on “generative AI” in the 2021 book. The latest boom is an outgrowth of database SaaS. The difference is the databases are much larger and the outputs more varied. Once you get past the hype, the early leaders are companies like ServiceNow and Adobe, which already have control over a lot of data and expertise in the underlying processing or presentation.
The idea of an AI “taking over your job” is real, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have a job. As was the case with everything Moore’s Law ever touched, it really means more work can be done. It also means there’s more value to what only a human being can do.
Resistance to Moore – In earlier versions of my book, I noted how a few industries like medicine, education and the law were successfully resisting technology. There’s less of that now, although there’s enormous consternation about it.
AI is helping hospitals staff correctly, even while drug companies use patents and politics to limit their own concessions. The use of videos for presentation of lessons, and of computers for measuring progress, should mean productivity gains in learning. But the formal structures of schooling are breaking down under the strain. Zoom cuts costs in processing many legal transactions, and DNA can make results more accurate, but there’s real fear of trial by machine.
There are other key issues that have just emerged in the last two years. Feel free to comment.
Most of the issues in our society relate, in some way, to how technology is changing. Hardly anyone is relating the changes in technology to societal changes. That’s what I am aiming to explore in the next edition of the book.
