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Chapter Two: Accelerating Returns

This chapter goes into depth on the characteristics of technological exponential growth. Once again, centering on computers and information processing power.

What Kurzweil points out is that technological progress comes through a series of breakthroughs and exploitations. Kurzweil calls this process a paradigm. A new promising process will be discovered. If it proves worthy it will be exploited in an exponential growth fashion. At some point it will reach the end of its Good Times era and a downward inflection will hit its growth curve as a diminishing return kicks in. Then "Ah well..." except that this cycle is repeated constantly, and in fact more quickly as we humans become more adept at this technology-mastering business. We do this whole process a whole lot faster now than we did in the 1700's, or even the early 1900's.

Kurzweil gives several examples of this speeding up. One being the shortening of time between when a hot new idea is developed, such as the telephone and the World Wide Web, and when twenty five percent of Americans are using it. The telephone took about thirty years and the web about nine.

Much of the chapter devotes itself to further examples such as this one, replete with many supporting graphs.

 

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