MacBook Pros for a Nickel by 2028

Scale is probably one of the most important skills necessary to become an exponential thinker. Recently Sal Kahn, the founder of KahnAcademy, came out with a video explaining exponential growth. It's worth watching. He shows how for many periods in the past, growth from a very small number seems imperceptible but at some point explodes with huge increments of change ... even though the rate of change remains constant.

Exponential Growth


In the real world you may have seen some of the terms in the chart below. It shows both expansion and decay based on exponential change. You will hear a lot about nano technology in months and years ahead. It is effectively 1 billionth of a meter. This is very small.
The promise is it will lead to fundamental changes in everything from energy to manufacturing. Since computing power is on a course to double every 20 months or so, in 15 years we will see it grow from a relative 1 to 2^15 which equals 32,768. By the way, that would make a $1000 MacBook Pro worth less than a Nickel. 

That amount of computing power for the same price we pay for a single unit will lead to  a level of progress in Nanotechnology that is hard to comprehend.

SI multiples for metre (m)

Submultiples				Multiples
Value	Symbol	Name		Value	Symbol	Name
10−1 m	dm	decimetre		101 m	dam	decametre
10−2 m	cm	centimetre		102 m	hm	hectometre
10−3 m	mm	millimetre		103 m	km	kilometre
10−6 m	µm	micrometre		106 m	Mm	megametre
10−9 m	nm	nanometre		109 m	Gm	gigametre
10−12 m	pm	picometre		1012 m	Tm	terametre
10−15 m	fm	femtometre		1015 m	Pm	petametre
10−18 m	am	attometre		1018 m	Em	exametre
10−21 m	zm	zeptometre		1021 m	Zm	zettametre
10−24 m	ym	yoctometre		1024 m	Ym	yottametre
Common prefixed units are in bold face.

So, this is why an understanding of scale and exponential growth and decay is so critical. Every individual and enterprise will be faced with an amount of change that will challenge the status quo. It's not in 100 years, it's around the corner.

The Lesson of Exponential Growth: Rice and the Chess Board

The inventor of chess, Sessa, pleased the current king so much, that he was asked to name his own prize. His request seemed modest. One grain of rice doubled for each square on the board.

"If a chessboard were to have rice placed upon each square such that one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on (doubling the number of grains on each subsequent square), how many grains of wheat would be on the chessboard at the finish?"

On the first half of the board, a total of 4,294,967,295 (2³² − 1) grains of rice, or about 100,000 kg of rice (assuming 25 mg as the mass of one grain of rice) were counted. India's annual rice output is about 1,200,000 times that amount. Not that bad.

What's an Exponologist?

Quite simply, an Exponologist is someone who studies exponential growth and its impact on society.

What exactly does that mean?

With processing power doubling every 20 months or so, each 5 year period will experience an 8 fold increase. So, in 5 years one unit of processing power will grow to 8, in 10 years to 64 and in 15 years to 512. It is this exponential change which will drive changes in automation, robotics and nano technology ... all of which in turn impact work, prices and costs of virtually all products and services.

Looking Forward by Exponential Periods

I have been thinking a lot about how to create a vocabulary to communicate about the impact of exponential technology change on all of the products, services, relationships, economics, education, etc. that we deal with on a day to day basis.

If we assume Moore's Law using a 20 month period as our doubling rate, there will be 3 doubles every 5 years or 2 ^ 3 which equals 8 as the multiplier for each Exponential Period (EP). For each EP, we need to understand Relative Processing Power (RPP), and $/RPP. In other words how powerful are processors getting and how does the cost of a processing unit decrease in cost.

Thinking Exponentially

If I accomplish one thing, I hope it is to get you to think exponentially. It's not easy. Most of us use the past to predict the future.

For example, 5 years ago we did not have an iPhone. So, you can say in that period of time, we went from the coolest phone being a Motorola Razor (because it was thin) to the iPhone 4s that comes with Siri. That is a lot of change. Hundreds of thousands apps, a dual core processor, centralized storage of music, apps, pictures, etc. (iCloud) ... the list goes on.

What does this tell us about the future?