1. We are now on the second half of the chessboard with computing power: things are starting to get weird
I forget where I originally read this but I think about it often. It refers to Gordon Moore's law, stated in 1965, where he predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months. You can interpret that to mean computing power, which has held.
This means that for almost 60 years the total computing power of the world has been exponentially growing: doubling the total computing capacity of the world every year and a half.
So after 48 years of this cycle in about 2013 we got 32 iterations (the first half of the chessboard). 2^32 meant that computing power was about 2 billion times greater than in 1965. Moving forward to 2023 we have had about 6 more cycles on the second half of the chessboard: 2^38 or about 275 billion times greater than 1965 and over 135 times greater than just 10 years ago.
Suppose Moore's law continues to hold until about 2060. Computing power would be 2^64 (18 billion-billion times!) greater than in 1965. Within many of our lifetimes computing power will be 67 million times greater than today!
This advancement helps explain why ChatGPT 4 was released just months after chatGPT 3 and computers can make photo-realistic images in seconds. It also foretells that the metaverse may be closer than we imagine.
Every year going forward things will be possible using code and electronic systems that were difficult to imagine 10 years ago. It costs me less to publish a 100-page book on Amazon and have them print it and deliver it to my door than it does to print it out at my desk: and it looks better too!
