A combination of an exponential decrease in cost and an exponential increase in production would make Moore’s law and Wright’s law indistinguishable, as originally pointed out by Sahal. We show for the first time that these regularities are observed in data to such a degree that the performance of these two laws is nearly the same. Our results show that technological progress is forecastable, with the square root of the logarithmic error growing linearly with the forecasting horizon at a typical rate of 2.5% per year. These results have implications for theories of technological change, and assessments of candidate technologies and policies for climate change mitigation.
Béla Nagy
J. Doyne Farmer
Quan M. Bui
Jessika E. Trancik
2012
Statistical Basis for Predicting Technological Progress
[I have two observations.
One; This is awesome! A variation of Moore’s Law applies to, apparently, all technology.
Two; It looks as if they had to make a tie in “climate change” to get National Science Foundation grant money. That’s really messed up. Government grants should not exist. The politics of research should succeed or fail using the money of someone other than that taken by gunpoint via taxes.—Joe]
So if progress is in exponential increase in technology, does some variation of this apply to regress in the form of exponentially growing regulation?
If technology is growing exponentially in spite of the regulation, can one assume the technological increase in progress would be the same across the board, doubling every 2 years, were it not for the regressive effects of regulation, thus deriving the actual exponent for the rate of regress?