The most dangerous metaphor

When will Moore’s Law no longer hold? For 40 years, semiconductor manufacturers have successfully lived up to the challenge of doubling the number of transistors they can squeeze onto a chip of silicon every 18 to 24 months. This magic trick has bequeathed the world computing devices that are constantly pulling off the astonishing feat of delivering greater power at less cost. Occasionally, someone will predict that the party is about to end, but so far, no one has been right. As a consequence, culturally speaking, we expect that the iPod Nano or iPhone that hits the stores six months from now will have twice the memory and be cheaper than what’s available today. This expectation, satisfied, has become practically an inalienable right.

…Metaphorically speaking, the end of Moore’s Law would be quite a shock. Moore’s Law inspires the kind of techno-utopianism that believes, almost as an act of faith, that humanity can innovate itself out of the messes it creates by sheer cleverness. Peak oil? Don’t worry about it — once Moore’s Law starts working its magic on solar power, we’ll have all the energy we need. World hunger in an era of drought and devastating climate change? No problem. Moore’s Law applied to biotechnology tells us that we will keep redesigning plants to deliver ever greater yields under ever more drastic conditions.

There are some truths buried in there. Our fantastically exploding knowledge about the genetic structure of life would not be possible without cheap computing power. The application of semiconductor manufacturing economies of scale to solar power will bring down costs and make solar power a competitive source of electricity. But there’s also a dangerous assumption built in; that we can keep this hustle going on forever. We’re like those chip execs who are confident that they can to the next level, even if they have no idea what technologies they’ll have to devise to get there. Oh, we’ll think of something, we always have.

Salon.com