From: avatar (avatar@renegadeclothing.com.au)
Date: Tue Feb 11 2003 - 23:31:50 MST
From Forget Moore's Law:
"As Mr. Schmidt points out in his notes, with Intel's research and development costs doubling every 18 months (apparently R&D follows Moore's law as well), in another 20 years the company's R&D costs will be $31 trillion annually. Something must give long, long before then.
But give the last word to Mr. Moore himself, who once said, "Obviously, you can't just keep doubling every couple years. After a while the numbers just become absurd. You'd have the semiconductor industry alone bigger than the entire GDP of the world.""
Obviously?
The entire GDP of... the world... in 2003?
I guess it depends on how you measure GDP in the world of self-reproducing nanotech assemblers, which should have been operating for 2 years in 2023.
In addition, in 2023 primitive AI and Drexlerian design-assistance molecular supercomputing should be busilly humming away.
This article demonstrates the difficulties of untangling the Singularity factor by factor. You can't trace one thread forward and ignore the rest. For conservatives, the best they can do is huddle around the 5 year bubble and make some sense within that. Now (2003) the materials nanotech wave has hit the bubble and the genetics wave should hit end of next year (2004). Real AI discussion probably hits the bubble about 2015, when disease has been eliminated and software drag begins to drop away.
Avatar
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Feb 11 2003 - 23:20:07 MST