[Electricity from solar power] is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we'll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.

- Ray Kurzweil

Suppose that solar power achieves and then surpasses "grid parity," meaning that it produces electrictity less expensively than conventional power sources. Once that happens, solar power would inevitably become the dominant energy source. Call it the Solar Singularity.

- Arnold Kling

Arnold Kling spends much of the rest of his article arguing that Kurzweil's solar optimism is misplaced. I disagree, but Kling's "solar singularity" idea is worth exploring.

Kurzweil's extrapolation on solar is simplistic. But it will also be right. It's not that Kurzweil thinks that Solar will improve (just) because we'll be able to write more solar cells in a smaller space like transistors on a computer chip. Instead, Kurzweil is describing a fundamental law of progress of which Moore's law is only the latest iteration.

Kurzweil (and others) have described the power of exponential doubling with a "Rice and the Chessboard" parable:

A king wanted to reward his faithful wiseman. The wiseman stated that all he wanted was a single grain of rice for the first square on a chessboard, 2 grains for the second square, and so on... doubling until all 64 squares were filled.

The King ordered that this "modest" request be honored - until he learned that his wiseman was really a wiseguy. 64 doublings would be all the rice ever harvested in the entire world.

Enter "Spock's Chessboard"

Exponential trends are powerful in ways that are hard to foresee even with something as simple as rice. But the doubling of information technology is much more surprising.

Moore's law (and its predessesors and successsors) have been progressing through an information technology chessboard. Every two years or so puts us on a new square with twice the computation per dollar spent. But that's not all. Because computation is the basis for the development of everything else, the computation board spawns other exponential chessboards. Solar technology gets its own board. Other energy technologies like fusion, biodiesel, and alcohol fuels are also progressing on their own chessboards.

Life extension gets a chessboard. In fact, Aubrey de Grey has already described a life extension singularity. It's his "bootstrapping to escape velocity" idea.

Each mini-board has its own singularity. Kling has described the solar singularity. A similar singularity could happen for fusion power. The age of personal medicine will arrive, I think, about the time that a $1,000 genome sequencing becomes possible. That will be a singularity for the genetics mini-board.

Along the way each mini-chessboard is fed by the main computation board, but they also sometimes feed other mini-chessboards or even feed the progress of the main computation board.

It's hard to overstate the challenge of forecasting the future of technology with so many interlocking variables. But with so many exponential processes working in our favor, I'm not going to bet against Kurzweil's optimism.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Last night (Friday, October 26^th), at Phil's kind invitation, I had the distinct pleasure of attending the Boulder Future Salon's monthly meeting and participating in a lively and far-flung consideration of the month's selected topic: "Moore's Law"

Continue reading "Boulder Future Salon Considers "Moore's Law"" »

Posted by Michael S. Sargent at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

`Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?' repeated Mr Jaggers, shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something. `Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has Great Expectations.'

Dickens, Great Expectations

In the upcoming current edition of FastForward Radio, Stephen and I spend some time talking about our recent discussion about The Secret, and what our views on that matter have to say about where The Speculist fits on a scale from the completely skeptical to the completely mystical/credulous. Without giving too much away about a show that's still in production that you can just go listen to, I will just say that at this site, we are quick to entertain any idea that entertains us, but we don't spend a lot of time on ideas that don't have a solid basis in science and technology.

Which isn't to say that science and technology are the only worthwhile subjects that might be discussed. The folks who write for The Speculist would probably have a lot to say about religion, for example -- seeing as we are mostly people of faith -- but along with politics, it is one of the two topics we generally avoid. (With a few notable exceptions.) Those subjects are taboo not because they aren't interesting or because we wouldn't have a lot to say about them, but rather because:

1. They already get plenty of coverage elsewhere in the blogosphere, and

2. They tend to take over, leaving little time or room for other discussions.

Anyway, there are plenty of other topics that we haven't spent a lot of time on, except to have some fun with them. Things like UFOs, for example. We don't write about UFOs because they aren't particularly interesting to us; and they aren't particularly interesting to us because we don't think there's much of anything there. The real world can prove much more exhilarating than imaginary substitutes. Take sea monsters: an actual sea monster captures the imagination in a way that the mythical one can't.

Likewise, The Secret offers us a world of infinite possibility accessible by means of the fact that our minds control physical reality. That's nice, but speaking as someone not yet thoroughly convinced that my mind does control physical reality, I am nonetheless astounded by the future of limitless possibility that lies before us. In one of the earliest entries at The Speculist, written about three and a half years ago, I dashed off a list of items that I believed we have a pretty good shot at being able to live to see. At the time, I labeled these items the "extremely good news."

On the one hand, that's correct. It is good news that all of these items lie within the possibility space of humanity. But on the other hand, there's nothing particularly extreme about this list. These are just a few possibilities that lie far beyond the scope of what most practitioners of The Secret ever think about, and yet they lie well within the scope of what is attainable by humanity. These are not our Great Expectations; they're just our reasonable expectations.

Preserving and Nurturing the Biosphere

1. Methods of production that generate zero pollutants

2. Energy sources that produce zero pollutants

3. Reversing of previous environmental damage

4. Human population levels with zero negative environmental impact

5. Preservation of natural habitat for all living species

6. The long-term survival of all living species

7. The retrieval of lost species

8. The creation of new species and new biospheres

Standards of Living

1. Eradication of hunger worldwide

2. Adequate clean water, housing, clothing, for all

3. Medical care for all

4. Access to technology and knowledge for all who want it

5. Total economic independence for individuals and groups who desire it

Indefinite Human Lifespan

1. Eradication of aging and infectious disease

2. Quick, effective treatment for any kind of cancer

3. Effective prevention/cures for heart disease, diabetes, other chronic diseases

4. Suspension of life not sustainable by current means

5. The transfer of human consciousness to new media

Work

1. Work necessary for economic viability, not for economic survival

2. Continued blurring of line between work and play

3. Full immersion VR to eliminate distance

4. Artificial Intelligences to assist us in work

Recreation

1. Artificial Intelligences to entertain and befriend us

2. Full immersion VR to simulate any experience

3. Consumer model of entertainment rivaled by producer/participant model

(Amazing how much things can change in such a short period of time. Look at item 3 in the immediately preceding category. I'd say we're well on our way with that one.)

Stephen was taken to task in the comments section of the aforelinked discussion of The Secret for suggesting that a person's goals should be "realistic." But I think he would agree that everything on this list is not only realistic, but quite reasonable. With a future this bright within our grasp, who needs spooky magic powers?

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 07:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Many people are afraid of our accelerating future. I doubt that the name for our destination - "The Technological Singularity" - helps relieve any fear. There's something sinister-sounding about any singularity, but this is a black hole in our timeline. You don't have to be especially prone to worry for this to cause concern

In some ways "Singularity" is the perfect name. It accurately represents our ability to predict the future at some point - perhaps after super intelligence arrives. But for glass-half-full guys like me, the Singularity is less a falling to zero than an explosion in personal power - more life, more liberty, and more happiness.

The engine powering all this is exponential increases in computation. This is a trend commonly called Moore's Law. Moore's Law states that the size of each transistor on an integrated circuit chip will be reduced by 50 percent every twenty-four months. The result is the exponentially growing power of integrated circuit-based computation over time. Moore's Law doubles the number of components on a chip as well as the speed of each component while price remains roughly constant.

Ray Kurzweil takes a broader view of this trend. Computation via the integrated circuit is just the latest paradigm that goes back to the arrival of RNA, if not before.

Wherever you place the starting line, the effect of exponential doubling is mind boggling. Here's a graph showing the effect of twelve doublings. Each step forward is equal to all the progress of the past in just one unit of time. Phil has illustrated the power of this trend with an old parable:

A prince wanted to reward the inventor of chess for the wonderful new game. So the inventor asked for one grain of rice for the first square on the chessboard, two grains for the second, four for the third square and so on doubling for each square.

[The prince] dispatched one of his stewards to fulfill the order. It took the steward a while to report back, and when he did the news was not good. Although harvest was just completed, the gift was going to completely exhaust the royal granaries. And they were only on the 40th square!

In fact, it turns out that if you were to keep doubling until you reached the 64th square, you would have an amount of rice greater than the total yield of every rice crop in the history of the planet earth.

As remarkable as this story is, it fails to capture the full power of the trends we are experiencing. We aren't just getting better computers. The exponential improvements in computation are fueling exponential trends in all areas of technology. To picture this we have to add a z-axis to our graph.

Our civilization is playing the rice game on Mr. Spock's chessboard! Advancement on the computation board buys our way onto new boards: nanotech, genetic engineering, life extension, self-replicating universal constructors, etc. Advancement on the new boards can further fuel the progress of any other board or create new boards. It's an explosion of knowledge in all directions.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Recently Phil spoke about the coming portability of all knowledge:

[My iPod] holds 20 gigabytes of memory, or about 500 songs. Last year’s model could hold only 10 gigabytes, about 250 songs. If I were using my iPod to hold text rather than music, it could hold about 20,000 books. And at the rate its capacity is growing, by the year 2020 my little iPod could hold the entire Library of Congress — text, graphics, everything.

Imagine what life will be like for a college student in the year 2020. Imagine what it will be like for a first grader! This thing is smaller and lighter than any single textbook any of us ever had to lug to school. Let me pass it around. Imagine holding virtually all human knowledge in the palm of your hand.

With the 40 gig iPod now available, storage capacity seems to be on schedule. Digital availability is on the way too:

Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with [Oxford University, Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library] to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.

The libraries are bringing their information to the table. Google is offering the money, expertise, and manpower necessary to digitize and electronically catalog these collections.

"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today," said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University's head librarian.

Two decades? I'm betting it's closer to 15 years.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)