Boulder Salon co-founder and moderator of the evening's discussion, Wayne Radinsky, self-described "Software Geek and Deep Thinker", set the stage for the evening's discussion, not only providing an excellent array of preparatory materials (which can be seen at the preceding link) but also introducing concrete examples of hardware and software evolution in the form of a pair of data-processing "fossils" from the murky early ages of personal computing history; an Intel 8086/8088 instruction set reference, and an Apple User Interface programmer's reference, both from the late '80's / early '90's.

University of Colorado Adjunct Professor, Douglas S. Robertson, lent a certain academic cachet to the assembly and contributed insight into the significance of the advent of automated information-processing in the historical, evolutionary, and geological record gleaned from his own research and presented for the general reader in his books, The New Renaissance, and Phase Change.

After what seemed an all-too-brief discussion, touching, however briefly, on the specific; ("The next generation of 20-nanometer semiconductor photo etching processes."), the broadly philosophical; ("Can Artificial Intelligence be accomplished, and how would we know it if we saw it?"), the poignantly realistic; ("Have the products of the last fifty years' "advance" in semiconductor and information-processing technology positively contributed to human existance?"), and the humorously ridiculous; ("Is a 'Deep Thought' system that takes several millions of years to output the product of its algorithm in any sense a 'useful' product?"), our moderator called for the room's consensus on the night's titular question: "Moore's Law is the doubling of computer processing power every 2 years or so. How long will it continue?"

The committee of the whole, including a longtime employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a researcher in atmospheric and weather modeling, a mainframe technician supporting the Global Positioning Satellite System's control segment, and some guy from Marketing, in addition to those already mentioned*, seemed to agree that, while the assertion attributed to Gordon Moore is distressingly un-specific, the fundamental observation that, for at least the period of time since the advent of the integrated circuit in 1959, there has been, on average, a significant and possibly accelerating degree of accumulated positive change in an array of physical and social technologies popularly aggregated under the rubric of 'electronics and data-processing' technologies and that, at least for the future period any of us is willing to speculate upon, we expect that this group of technologies will continue to make significant progress against such measures as cost vs. utility, absolute performance (calculations/instructions/etc. per unit time) and efficiency (calculations/instructions/ect. per dollar or per unit of input energy). As a parallel consideration, the group expressed an interest in the ability of individuals and groups to make some sort of 'productive' use (and, here, entertainment and/or distraction were considered 'productive') of many more and more powerful data-processing tools.

I'd like to thank Phil, Wayne, and all the founders and members of the Boulder Future Salon for including me in an entertaining, interesting, and thought-provoking event and look forward to an opportunity to take part in forthcoming Salon events.

[*My apolgies to those in attendance whose names I've omitted and / or whose associations I've misremembered. Next time, I'm taking notes! Such group of minds deserves appropriate recognition. -- M.S.]