Accelerating change facts for kids

Accelerating change is the idea that technology and human knowledge are growing and changing faster and faster. Imagine a snowball rolling down a hill – it gets bigger and faster as it goes. This concept suggests that the future might bring even more rapid and surprising changes to our world and how we live.

Why Technology is Speeding Up

Early Ideas About Fast Change

People have noticed this speeding-up trend for a long time.

• In 1910, Daniel Burnham, a city planner, saw that knowledge was not just growing, but expanding at a "geometric ratio." He predicted that future generations would see changes that would "stagger us."
• In 1938, Buckminster Fuller used the word ephemeralization. This means "doing more with less," like making smaller, more powerful devices. He showed how new chemical elements were discovered faster over time, proving that human knowledge was speeding up.
• In 1958, scientist Stanislaw Ulam talked with John von Neumann about technology's "ever accelerating progress." They wondered if this speed-up might lead to a point where human life, as we know it, would be completely different.

Moore's Law and Smart Robots

Hans Moravec, a computer scientist, looked at how fast computers were improving.

• He used something called Moore's law. This law says that the number of transistors (tiny switches) on a computer chip doubles about every two years. This means computers get twice as powerful and cheaper at the same time!
• Moravec thought this idea applied to technology even before computer chips. He predicted that robots would become super smart, almost like a new kind of artificial life, possibly around 2030–2040.
• In his 1998 book, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Moravec even looked at how animal brains have grown more powerful over millions of years. He imagined a "mind fire" where artificial intelligence would grow incredibly fast, becoming superintelligent.

How Inventions Connect and Speed Up

James Burke, a science historian, explored how inventions are linked in his TV series Connections (1978).

• He showed that new ideas and technologies don't just appear out of nowhere. Instead, they come from a huge web of connected events and discoveries.
• For example, someone might invent something for one reason, but it ends up being used in a completely different way later on. These unexpected links drive history and innovation.
• Burke also pointed out that as more inventions appear, there are more ways for them to connect. This makes the process of innovation speed up even more. He wondered if this rate of change could become too much for people to handle.

Big Shifts in Human Understanding

In 1983, Gerald Hawkins wrote about "mindsteps" in his book Mindsteps to the Cosmos.

• He described mindsteps as huge, lasting changes in how humans understand the world.
• He identified five big mindsteps in history, each linked to new technologies like writing, mathematics, printing, and computers. Each step helped humans understand more about themselves and the universe.
• Hawkins noticed that the time between these mindsteps was getting shorter and shorter. He even created an equation that predicted future mindsteps, with the next one possibly around 2021.

Mass use of inventions: Years until use by a quarter of US population

• He believed that we might face discoveries and ideas that are hard to imagine right now.

The Law of Accelerating Returns

Ray Kurzweil, a famous futurist, proposed "The Law of Accelerating Returns" in 1999.

• He says that change in many systems, especially technology, tends to grow exponentially. This means it doesn't just add a little bit each time, but multiplies.
• Kurzweil believes that when one technology hits a limit, a new one is invented to push past that limit. He gives many examples from history to show this pattern.
• He predicts that these big changes will happen more and more often. This could lead to a "technological singularity" before the end of the 21st century, possibly around 2045.

Moore's Law expanded to other technologies.

An updated version of Moore's Law over 120 years (based on Kurzweil's graph). The seven most recent data points are all Nvidia GPUs.

• Kurzweil suggests that the 21st century might see as much progress as 20,000 years at today's rate! He thinks that machine intelligence will soon be smarter than human intelligence. This could lead to humans merging with technology and reaching very high levels of intelligence.

Computer power grows exponentially.

Exponential growth in supercomputer power

• Kurzweil explains that since the beginning of evolution, life forms have evolved faster and faster. Humans can now design new things intentionally, which speeds up progress even more.
• Things like language, writing, and computers have all helped us learn faster. Each big step in handling information has happened quicker than the last. This pattern, he believes, will lead to incredible technological progress in our century.

How Fast is Knowledge Growing?

• R. Buckminster Fuller estimated in 1981 that all human knowledge accumulated by the year 1 CE took about 1500 years to double.
• The next doubling took only 250 years (until 1750 CE).
• By 1900, it doubled again in just 150 years.
• This shows that the speed at which knowledge doubles is getting faster and faster. This rapid growth of knowledge is a key idea behind the technological singularity, where technology progresses faster than human biological evolution.

Are There Limits to This Change?

Some scientists believe that even though change is speeding up now, it might eventually slow down or reach a limit.

• In nature, processes that grow very fast often reach a point where they slow down. This could happen with scientific and technological progress too.
• Even if the acceleration stops, progress itself wouldn't stop. It would just continue at a very high, steady speed.
• Some theories even suggest that this accelerating change is a basic feature of the universe. It might lead to incredibly efficient and dense forms of technology, possibly even related to black holes.

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