Moore’s Law has been around for 46 years. It’s a descriptor for
the trend we’ve seen in the development of computer hardware for
decades, with no sign of slowing down, where the number of
transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles
every two years. The law is named after Gordon Moore, who
described this pattern in 1965. He would know a thing or two
about integrated circuits. He co-founded Intel in 1968. Moore
has said in recent years that there’s about 10 or 20 years left
in this trend, because “we’re approaching the size of atoms
which is a fundamental barrier.” But then, he said, we’ll just
make bigger chips. Ray Kurzweil, who we mentioned in last
weekend’s piece on transhumanism, is known for his thoughts on
another subject even more than he is known for his thoughts on
transhumanism. That subject is the technological Singularity.
The singularity comes after the time when our technological
creations exceed the computing power of human brains, and
Kurzweil predicts that based on Moore’s