One topic in the coming re-write of my Moore’s Law book, now called Moore’s Law Explains it All, involves what I call Moore’s Law of Politics.
Moore’s Second Law, the rising capital cost of chip making, offsets Moore’s Law itself. Moore’s Law of Software, its value increasing with use, offsets Moore’s Law of Content, because most content doesn’t gain in value once you read, hear or see it.
At the same time Moore’s Law of Health, the fact that technology lets us live longer, creates a negative in Moore’s Law of Politics.
Political decision-making is stuck in the past.
I got a reminder of this during my recent trip to Heidelberg. I met a young Vietnamese mathematician. He was about the same age as my own son, 28.
I asked him about the Vietnam War. To him it’s an historical relic, like our Civil War. Even his father wasn’t impacted by it. It’s something from his grandfather’s time.
To Americans, however, the War in Vietnam remains politically relevant. While my new friend’s grandfather was a Vietnam Vet, my son’s grandfathers were World War II veterans. (One of his great-uncles was born in 1904.)
My young friend’s generation is the front of Vietnam’s Baby Boom. Half that country is now under 21. The cost of raising kids means we’re now going through a Baby Bust. I’m still not a grandfather and may never be one.
I often relate this in a game I call “Time Flies.”
- This year’s high school graduating class was all born after 9/11. College students have no memory of Bill Clinton as President.
- The Atlanta Olympics was a full generation ago. I still sometimes catch myself calling Kirkwood a black neighborhood. It hasn’t been one for 20 years.
- My son likes the Eagles’ Hotel California. It’s 43 years old, as old as We’re in the Money, issued in 1944, was then.
- We’re now as distant from the late 1960s as that era was from World War I.
- The end of World War II was almost 75 years ago. Flash back 75 years from that date and the electric light hasn’t been invented.
- We’re now more distant in time from Gone with the Wind than that movie was from the Civil War it portrayed.
- My own house was built in 1923. It’s 96 years old. Flash back 96 years from there and Atlanta hasn’t been founded.
This telescoping of time makes it hard for us to deal with issues that matter.
The environmental movement, the gay rights movement, and the women’s movement are now 50 years in the past. Gloria Steinem is 85.
Issues that should have been settled long ago remain unsettled because of how Moore’s Law of Health interferes with Moore’s Law of Politics. In 2016, 27% of voters were age 65 and over. In 1934, when Social Security was launched, the median age at death was 67.
That’s why, while technology has been dominating this economy for decades now, we’re still basing political decisions on the interests of oil and manufacturing.
This impacts how we talk about all sorts of things. We act like retired people don’t know what a PC is. I’ve spent my career covering PCs, and I turn 65 next year.
“Maybe time running out is a gift,” Jason Isbell wrote in his song If We Were Vampires. It is, in terms of our politics, because we remain wedded to our youth even as we age. With technology pulling us forward faster and faster, with our need to adapt increasingly urgent, this is a big problem.
