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How many times is it necessary to fold a paper so that its thickness matches the gap between the Earth and the Moon? Probably very few people would answer correctly, that is just forty-two times. This proves as the exponential growth concept still eludes our common intuitions.
While we are already able to image the outcomes of a linear process, we are still astonished by the unexpected results of an exponential progression. Yet, in next years this kind of experience will be always more frequent and ordinary.
Behind this statement there is the famous “Moore’s law”, the empiric rule of the Intel co-founder who, in the last fifty years, has foreseen and verified as the informatics technology has been able to double the computing power of its system every eighteen months.
At least once every one of us has directly verified this theory, e.g. buying after some years a new mobile or PC or a simple usb key. It is however in a medium and long term that this vertiginous growth takes on its surprising shape. Suffice to say that the computing capacity developed by the very expensive 32 kg calculator, that leaded Apollo missions in the 60s, could now easily be contained in a disposable happy birthday electronic card.
The acceleration will of course interest a bigger and bigger number of areas. For example, impressive progress are now in evidence in medical and automotive industry. Because, as Ray Kurzweil has said “when any kind of technology becomes an informatics technology, it begins to progress exponentially”.
Artificial intelligence, robotics, 3d print: in just a few years we will be spectators of deep changes in relations, consumptions and work. Experts such as Larry Downes e Paul Nunes even talk of “disruption innovation” , that is a growth capable in a few time to subvert the acquired rules, so that won’t be as much important the foreseeability, but the capability to react to surprise and disorientation.
In the next future the Moore’s law will have to face with the physical limits of the matter, that won’t permit (at least with the same easiness) the microchips miniaturization process (already became nanochips). Despite it, the speed of change and reorganization will be for sure among the more challenge aspects of the tomorrow society.
In this perspective, a thought should be addressed to education: if reality will change with such a vertiginous rhythm, what will mean to teach to the new generations knowledges or professions that in a few years could already be considered obsolete? Probably out schools and universities mission will be to teach to our sons and daughters the art of learning and adapting as quick as possible.