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Information technology grows in an exponential manner. It's not
linear. And our intuition is linear. When we walked through the
savanna a thousand years ago we made linear predictions where
that animal would be, and that worked fine. It's hardwired in
our brains. But the pace of exponential growth is really what
describes information technologies. And it's not just
computation. There is a big difference between linear and
exponential growth. If I take 30 steps linearly -- one, two,
three, four, five -- I get to 30. If I take 30 steps
exponentially -- two, four, eight, 16 -- I get to a billion. It
makes a huge difference. And that really describes information
technology. When I was a student at MIT, we all shared one
computer that took up a whole building. The computer in your
cellphone today is a million times cheaper, a million times
smaller, a thousand times more powerful. That's a billion-fold
increase in capability per dollar that we've actually ex