In 1976, Ray Kurzweil launched the blind into the digital revolution when
he demonstrated the first Kurzweil Reading Machine, which converted
printed text into synthetic speech. The machine and its constituent
technologies of flatbed scanning, optical character recognition and speech
synthesis began a process of increasing information independence for the
blind. The New York Times Book Review features a new book by Ray Kurzweil
today. The review is below as well as the full text of the first chapter.
The two items are separated by a line of asterisks (****).
kelly
January 3, 1999
Hello, HAL
______________________________________________________________
Three books examine the future of artificial intelligence and find
the human brain is in trouble.
By COLIN McGINN
_________________________________________________________________
THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES
When Computers Exceed
Human Intelligence.
By Ray Kurzweil.
Illustrated. 388 pp. New York:
Viking. $25.95.
_________________________________________________________________
ROBOT
Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind.
By Hans Moravec.
Illustrated. 227 pp. New York:
Oxford University Press. $25.
_________________________________________________________________
WHEN THINGS START TO THINK
By Neil Gershenfeld.
Illustrated. 225 pp. New York:
Henry Holt & Company. $25.
_________________________________________________________________
Has the invasion already begun? Are the aliens already right under
our noses? Are machines, the products of human engineering
intelligence, poised to take over the world -- or is this an
irrational fear, the latest spasm of the Luddite spirit? Finally, is
the whole idea just a clever marketing ploy for the investment-hungry
artificial intelligence industry? Here we have three books, all
written by experts in computer intelligence, aimed to persuade us that
the Age of Machines is nigh. We are to be eclipsed by our own
technology, ceding our outdated flesh, blood and neural tissue to
integrated circuits and their mechanistic progeny. The future belongs
to the robots.
The roots of this dystopian vision (or utopian, depending on your
view) go back to a prediction made in the mid-1960's by a former
chairman of Intel, Gordon Moore, that the size of each transistor on
an integrated circuit will be reduced by 50 percent every 24 months.
This prediction, now grandly known as Moore's law, implies the
exponentially expanding power of circuit-based computation over time.
A rough corollary is that you will get double the computational power
for the same price at two-year intervals. Thus computers today can
perform millions more computations per second than equivalently priced
computers of only a few decades ago. It is further predicted that new
computer technologies will take over where integrated circuits leave
off and continue the inexorable march toward exponentially increasing
computational power. The computational capacity of the human brain is
only a few decades away from being duplicated on an affordable
computing machine. Brains are about to be outpaced by one of their
products. They are already being outdone in certain areas: speed of
calculation, data storage, theorem-proving, chess.
All three of these books provide a vivid window on the state of the
art in artificial intelligence research, and offer provocative
speculations on where we might be heading as the information age
advances. Of the three, ''The Age of Spiritual Machines,'' by Ray
Kurzweil, is the best: it is more detailed, thoughtful, clearly
explained and attractively written than ''Robot: Mere Machine to
Transcendent Mind,'' by Hans Moravec, and ''When Things Start to
Think,'' by Neil Gershenfeld -- though all three are creditable
efforts at popularization.
Since the books cover much the same ground, with some difference of
emphasis, Kurzweil's gives you the most bits for your buck.
Gershenfeld's breezily chatty book sometimes reads too much like an
advertisement for the Media Lab at M.I.T., of which he is director.
There is much discussion (and not a little hype) of his many
achievements in harnessing computer technology to more physical
concerns: electronic books, smart shoes, wearable computers,
technologically enhanced cellos.
Moravec's book is more intellectually adventurous and free with
confident futuristic speculation. He envisages autonomous robot-run
industries that we tax to siphon off their wealth, and the gradual
replacement of organic humans with mechanical descendants -- our
''mind children.'' His vision is of a world in which machines are the
next evolutionary step, with organic tissue but a blink in the eye of
cosmic history. Once intelligence is created by natural selection it
will be only a matter of time (a very short one by cosmic standards)
before the products of intelligence outshine their creators, finally
displacing them altogether. This is good knockabout stuff, a heady and
unnerving glimpse into a possible future. Where Moravec is weak is in
attempts at philosophical discussion of machine consciousness and the
nature of mind. He writes bizarre, confused, incomprehensible things
about consciousness as an abstraction, like number, and as a mere
''interpretation'' of brain activity. He also loses his grip on the
distinction between virtual and real reality as his speculations
spiral majestically into incoherence.
Kurzweil is more philosophically sensitive, and hence cautious, in his
claims for computer consciousness; he develops the same kinds of
speculations as Moravec, but with more of an emphasis on the meaning
of such innovations for human life. He has an engaging discussion of
the future of virtual sex once the technology includes realistic
haptic simulations (what other bodies feel like to touch); here he
envisages the eventual triumph of the virtual over the real. His book
ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang,
quantum theory, DNA computers, quantum computers, Godel's theorem,
neural nets, genetic algorithms, nanoengineering, the Turing test,
brain scanning, the slowness of neurons, chess playing programs, the
Internet -- the whole world of information technology past, present
and future. This is a book for computer enthusiasts, science fiction
writers in search of cutting-edge themes and anyone who wonders where
human technology is going next.
But the question must be asked: How seriously are we to take all this
breathless compuhype? Will the 21st century really see machines
acquire mentality?
There is naturally a lot of talk in these books about the possibility
of machines duplicating the operations of the human mind. But it is
vital to distinguish two questions, which are often run together by
our authors: Can machines duplicate the external intelligent behavior
of humans? And can machines duplicate the inner subjective experience
of people? Call these the questions of outside and inside duplication.
What is known as the Turing test says in effect that if a machine can
mimic the outside of a human then it has thereby replicated the
inside: if it behaves like a human with a mind, it has a mind. All
three authors are partial to the Turing test, thus equating the
simulation of external manifestations of mind with the reality of mind
itself. However, the Turing test is seriously flawed as a criterion of
mentality.
First, it is just an application of the doctrine of behaviorism, the
view that minds reduce to bodily motions; and behaviorism has long
since been abandoned, even by psychologists. Behavior is just the
evidence for mind in others, not its very nature. This is why you can
act as if you are in pain and not really be in pain -- you are just
pretending.
Second, there is the kind of problem highlighted by the philosopher
John Searle in his ''Chinese Room'' argument: computer programs work
merely by the manipulation of symbols without any reference to what
these symbols might mean, so that it would be possible for a human to
follow such a program for a language he has no understanding of. The
computer is like my manipulating sentences of Chinese according to
formal rules and yet having no understanding of the Chinese language.
It follows that mimicking the externals of human understanding by
means of a symbol-crunching computer program is not devising a machine
that itself understands. None of our authors even so much as consider
this well-known and actually quite devastating argument.
Third, to know whether we can construct a machine that is conscious we
need to know what makes us conscious, for only then can we determine
whether the actual basis of consciousness can occur in an inorganic
system. But we simply don't know what makes organic brains conscious;
we don't know what properties of neurons are responsible for the
emergence of subjectivity. We would need to solve the age-old
mind-body problem before we could sensibly raise the question of minds
in machines. My hunch is that it is something about specifically
organic tissue that is responsible for consciousness, since this seems
to be the way nature has chosen to engineer consciousness; but that
can only be a guess in view of our deep ignorance of the roots of
consciousness in the brain. In any case, lacking insight into the
basis of consciousness, it is futile to ask whether a machine could
have what it takes to generate consciousness.
Passing the Turing test is therefore no proof of machine
consciousness: outside duplication does not guarantee inside
duplication. This bears strongly on a practical suggestion of Kurzweil
-- that during the course of the 21st century we might decide to
''upload'' ourselves into a suitable computing machine as a way of
extending our lives and acquiring a more robust physical constitution.
Let us suppose that the machine you choose to upload into passes the
Turing test; it had better or else you would not wish to inhabit it.
The problem is that it might do so without containing the potential
for any form of consciousness, so that uploading your mind into it
amounts to letting your mind evaporate into thin air. You will pass
from sentient being to insentient robot.
That is a lot to risk on the veracity of the Turing test! And it is no
good hoping that the robots themselves will tell you whether they are
conscious, since they will say they are -- whether or not they are. If
people become convinced of the validity of the Turing test on mistaken
philosophical grounds, then we might find ourselves in the position of
unknowingly extinguishing our consciousness by uploading into machines
that are inherently incapable of feeling anything. If Kurzweil is
right when he says that machines that mimic the externals of human
performance will become available sometime during the next century,
then I suggest that the human race ponder the merits of the Turing
test very carefully before taking any drastic steps. I for one would
prefer sentient mortality to insentient immortality, or, more
accurately, to the end of my self and the creation of an unconscious
machine that merely behaves like me.
Kurzweil, Moravec and Gershenfeld take it as a given that the mind is
essentially a computer. The question then is just how powerful a
computer the mind is and whether a machine could duplicate this power.
But the authors do not think hard enough about their basic assumption.
It is true that human minds manipulate symbols and engage in mental
computations, as when doing arithmetic. But it does not follow from
this that computing is the essence of mind; maybe computing is just
one aspect of the nature of mind. And isn't this already obvious from
the fact that many nonmental systems engage in computations? Silicon
chips are not conscious, nor are the components of any future
molecular or quantum computer. The fact is that minds are just one
kind of computational system among many, not all of which have any
trace of mentality in them. So computation cannot be definitive of
mind.
One aspect of mind wholly omitted by the computational conception is
the phenomenological features of experience -- the specific way a rose
smells, for instance. This is something over and above any
rose-related computations a machine might perform. A DNA computer has
biochemical as well as computational properties; a conscious mind has
phenomenological as well as computational properties. These
phenomenological properties have a stronger claim to being distinctive
of the mind than mere computational ones. There is thus no reductive
explanation of the mental in terms of the computational; we cannot
regard consciousness as nothing but a volley of physically implemented
symbol manipulations. And this means that there is no reason at all to
believe that building ever larger and faster computers will take us
one jot closer to building a genuinely mental machine. The fallacy
here is analogous to reasoning that if a human body is a device for
taking you from A to B, and a car also does this, then a human body is
the same thing as a car. Minds compute and so do silicon chips, but
that is no reason to suppose that minds are nothing more than what
they have in common with silicon chips (any more than silicon chips
are nothing more than what they have in common with minds).
If our three authors are wobbly on the philosophy of mind and
artificial intelligence, they are strong on computer technology
itself; and here is where their books are particularly interesting.
The reader can simply detach all the dubious speculations about
machine consciousness and focus on the authors' predictions about the
future of computer and robot technology, its potential benefits and
hazards. Consider two examples of the kind of technology that might
well be just over the horizon: the foglets and the nanobots. Foglets
are tiny, cell-sized robots, each more computationally powerful than
the human brain, that are equipped with minute gripping arms that
enable them to join together into diverse physical structures. At ease
the foglets are just a loose swarm of suspended particles in the air,
but when you press a button they execute a program for forming
themselves into an object of your choosing. We may come to live in
foglet houses whose rooms are formed from the same foggy swarm. We may
come to have foglet friends and take foglet vacations. Our entire
physical environment may come to consist of a 3-D mosaic of
cooperating microscopic computers. This would be virtual reality made
concrete.
Nanobots are devices for nanoengineering, the manipulation of matter
on the atomic scale. They are also high-power microcomputers, equipped
with manipulative skills and an urge to perpetuate their kind. They
can make copies of themselves by following a program for nano-scale
operations on chunks of surrounding matter. Imagine you start with 10
of them and that they can each make a copy of themselves in five
seconds (they can do many millions of computations a second and their
little mechanical limbs move, insectlike, with great rapidity). That
means they double their numbers every five seconds, and an exponential
nanobot population explosion is set to break out. These little
blighters could consume the entire planet in a matter of weeks,
including all the organic material on it! Nor would they be picked off
by natural predators, being quite indigestible. In a very short time
the nanobots will have razed everything in sight.
Self-replication is perhaps the biggest hazard presented by advanced
computer technology. Even today computers are routinely used to design
other computers; in the next century they may be making computers that
challenge humans in all sorts of ways. Victor Frankenstein refused to
give his monstrous creation a bride for fear of their reproductive
potential. Maybe we should be thinking hard now about the replicative
powers of intelligent machines. If the 20th century was the century of
nuclear weapons, then the 21st might be the century of self-breeding
aliens of our own devising.
_________________________________________________________________
Colin McGinn, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, is the
author of ''Ethics, Evil and Fiction'' and ''The Mysterious Flame:
Conscious Minds in a Material World,'' to be published this spring.
*******************
CHAPTER ONE
The Age of Spiritual Machines
When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
______________________________________________________________
By RAY KURZWEIL
Viking
The Law Of Time And Chaos
A (Very Brief) History of the Universe:
Time Slowing Down
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
-- Muriel Rukeyser
Is the universe a great mechanism, a great computation, a great
symmetry, a great accident or a great thought?
-- John D. Barrow
As we start at the beginning, we will notice an unusual attribute
of the nature of time, one that is critical to our passage to the
twenty-first century. Our story begins perhaps 15 billion years
ago. No conscious life existed to appreciate the birth of our
Universe at the time, but we appreciate it now, so retroactively it
did happen. (In retrospect -- from one perspective of quantum
mechanics -- we could say that any Universe that fails to evolve
conscious life to apprehend its existence never existed in the
first place.)
It was not until 10-43 seconds (a tenth of a millionth of a
trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second) after the
birth of the Universe that the situation had cooled off
sufficiently (to 100 million trillion trillion degrees) that a
distinct force -- gravity -- evolved.
Not much happened for another 10-34 seconds (this is also a very
tiny fraction of a second, but it is a billion times longer than
10-43 seconds), at which point an even cooler Universe (now only a
billion billion billion degrees) allowed the emergence of matter in
the form of electrons and quarks. To keep things balanced,
antimatter appeared as well. It was an eventful time, as new forces
evolved at a rapid rate. We were now up to three: gravity, the
strong force, and the electroweak force. After another 10-10
seconds (a tenth of a billionth of a second), the electroweak force
split into the electromagnetic and weak forces we know so well
today.
Things got complicated after another 10-5 seconds (ten millionths
of a second). With the temperature now down to a relatively balmy
trillion degrees, the quarks came together to form protons and
neutrons. The antiquarks did the same, forming antiprotons.
Somehow, the matter particles achieved a slight edge. How this
happened is not entirely clear. Up until then, everything had
seemed so, well, even. But had everything stayed evenly balanced,
it would have been a rather boring Universe. For one thing, life
never would have evolved, and thus we could conclude that the
Universe would never have existed in the first place.
For every 10 billion antiprotons, the Universe contained 10 billion
and 1 protons. The protons and antiprotons collided, causing the
emergence of another important phenomenon: light (photons). Thus,
almost all of the antimatter was destroyed, leaving matter as
dominant. (This shows you the danger of allowing a competitor to
achieve even a slight advantage.)
Of course, had antimatter won, its descendants would have called it
matter and would have called matter antimatter, so we would be back
where we started (perhaps that is what happened).
After another second (a second is a very long time compared to some
of the earlier chapters in the Universe's history, so notice how
the time frames are growing exponentially larger), the electrons
and antielectrons (called positrons) followed the lead of the
protons and antiprotons and similarly annihilated each other,
leaving mostly the electrons.
After another minute, the neutrons and protons began coalescing
into heavier nuclei, such as helium, lithium, and heavy forms of
hydrogen. The temperature was now only a billion degrees.
About 300,000 years later (things are slowing down now rather
quickly), with the average temperature now only 3,000 degrees, the
first atoms were created as the nuclei took control of nearby
electrons.
After a billion years, these atoms formed large clouds that
gradually swirled into galaxies.
After another two billion years, the matter within the galaxies
coalesced further into distinct stars, many with their own solar
systems.
Three billion years later, circling an unexceptional star on the
arm of a common galaxy, an unremarkable planet we call the Earth
was born.
Now before we go any further, let's notice a striking feature of
the passage of time. Events moved quickly at the beginning of the
Universe's history. We had three paradigm shifts in just the first
billionth of a second. Later on, events of cosmological
significance took billions of years. The nature of time is that it
inherently moves in an exponential fashion -- either geometrically
gaining in speed, or, as in the history of our Universe,
geometrically slowing down. Time only seems to be linear during
those eons in which not much happens. Thus most of the time, the
linear passage of time is a reasonable approximation of its
passage. But that's not the inherent nature of time.
Why is this significant? It's not when you're stuck in the eons in
which not much happens. But it is of great significance when you
find yourself in the "knee of the curve," those periods in which
the exponential nature of the curve of time explodes either
inwardly or outwardly. It's like falling into a black hole (in that
case, time accelerates exponentially faster as one falls in).
The Speed of Time
But wait a second, how can we say that time is changing its
"speed"? We can talk about the rate of a process, in terms of its
progress per second, but can we say that time is changing its rate?
Can time start moving at, say, two seconds per second?
Einstein said exactly this -- time is relative to the entities
experiencing it. One man's second can be another woman's forty
years. Einstein gives the example of a man who travels at very
close to the speed of light to a star -- say, twenty light-years
away. From our Earth-bound perspective, the trip takes slightly
more than twenty years in each direction. When the man gets back,
his wife has aged forty years. For him, however, the trip was
rather brief. If he travels at close enough to the speed of light,
it may have only taken a second or less (from a practical
perspective we would have to consider some limitations, such as the
time to accelerate and decelerate without crushing his body). Whose
time frame is the correct one? Einstein says they are both correct,
and exist only relative to each other.
Certain species of birds have a life span of only several years. If
you observe their rapid movements, it appears that they are
experiencing the passage of time on a different scale. We
experience this in our own lives. A young child's rate of change
and experience of time is different from that of an adult. Of
particular note, we will see that the acceleration in the passage
of time for evolution is moving in a different direction than that
for the Universe from which it emerges.
It is in the nature of exponential growth that events develop
extremely slowly for extremely long periods of time, but as one
glides through the knee of the curve, events erupt at an
increasingly furious pace. And that is what we will experience as
we enter the twenty-first century.
EVOLUTION: TIME SPEEDING UP
In the beginning was the word. . . . And the word became flesh.
-- John 1:1,14
A great deal of the universe does not need any explanation.
Elephants, for instance. Once molecules have learnt to compete and
create other molecules in their own image, elephants, and things
resembling elephants, will in due course be found roaming through
the countryside.
-- Peter Atkins
The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.
-- Winston Churchill
We'll come back to the knee of the curve, but let's delve further
into the exponential nature of time. In the nineteenth century, a
set of unifying principles called the laws of thermodynamics was
postulated. As the name implies, they deal with the dynamic nature
of heat and were the first major refinement of the laws of
classical mechanics perfected by Isaac Newton a century earlier.
Whereas Newton had described a world of clockwork perfection in
which particles and objects of all sizes followed highly
disciplined, predictable patterns, the laws of thermodynamics
describe a world of chaos. Indeed, that is what heat is.
Heat is the chaotic -- unpredictable -- movement of the particles
that make up the world. A corollary of the second law of
thermodynamics is that in a closed system (interacting entities and
forces not subject to outside influence; for example, the
Universe), disorder (called "entropy") increases. Thus, left to its
own devices, a system such as the world we live in becomes
increasingly chaotic. Many people find this describes their lives
rather well. But in the nineteenth century, the laws of
thermodynamics were considered a disturbing discovery. At the
beginning of that century, it appeared that the basic principles
governing the world were both understood and orderly. There were a
few details left to be filled in, but the basic picture was under
control. Thermodynamics was the first contradiction to this
complacent picture. It would not be the last.
The second law of thermodynamics, sometimes called the Law of
Increasing Entropy, would seem to imply that the natural emergence
of intelligence is impossible. Intelligent behavior is the opposite
of random behavior, and any system capable of intelligent responses
to its environment needs to be highly ordered. The chemistry of
life, particularly of intelligent life, is comprised of
exceptionally intricate designs. Out of the increasingly chaotic
swirl of particles and energy in the world, extraordinary designs
somehow emerged. How do we reconcile the emergence of intelligent
life with the Law of Increasing Entropy?
There are two answers here. First, while the Law of Increasing
Entropy would appear to contradict the thrust of evolution, which
is toward increasingly elaborate order, the two phenomena are not
inherently contradictory. The order of life takes place amid great
chaos, and the existence of life-forms does not appreciably affect
the measure of entropy in the larger system in which life has
evolved. An organism is not a closed system. It is part of a larger
system we call the environment, which remains high in entropy. In
other words, the order represented by the existence of life-forms
is insignificant in terms of measuring overall entropy.
Thus, while chaos increases in the Universe, it is possible for
evolutionary processes that create increasingly intricate, ordered
patterns to exist simultaneously. Evolution is a process, but it is
not a closed system. It is subject to outside influence, and indeed
draws upon the chaos in which it is embedded. So the Law of
Increasing Entropy does not rule out the emergence of life and
intelligence.
For the second answer, we need to take a closer look at evolution,
as it was the original creator of intelligence.
The Exponentially Quickening Pace of Evolution
As you will recall, after billions of years, the unremarkable
planet called Earth was formed. Churned by the energy of the sun,
the elements formed more and more complex molecules. From physics,
chemistry was born.
Two billion years later, life began. That is to say, patterns of
matter and energy that could perpetuate themselves and survive
perpetuated themselves and survived. That this apparent tautology
went unnoticed until a couple of centuries ago is itself
remarkable.
Over time, the patterns became more complicated than mere chains of
molecules. Structures of molecules performing distinct functions
organized themselves into little societies of molecules. From
chemistry, biology was born.
Thus, about 3.4 billion years ago, the first earthly organisms
emerged: anaerobic (not requiring oxygen) prokaryotes
(single-celled creatures) with a rudimentary method for
perpetuating their own designs. Early innovations that followed
included a simple genetic system, the ability to swim, and
photosynthesis, which set the stage for more advanced,
oxygen-consuming organisms. The most important development for the
next couple of billion years was the DNA-based genetics that would
henceforth guide and record evolutionary development.
A key requirement for an evolutionary process is a "written" record
of achievement, for otherwise the process would be doomed to repeat
finding solutions to problems already solved. For the earliest
organisms, the record was written (embodied) in their bodies, coded
directly into the chemistry of their primitive cellular structures.
With the invention of DNA-based genetics, evolution had designed a
digital computer to record its handiwork. This design permitted
more complex experiments. The aggregations of molecules called
cells organized themselves into societies of cells with the
appearance of the first multicellular plants and animals about 700
million years ago. For the next 130 million years, the basic body
plans of modern animals were designed, including a spinal
cord-based skeleton that provided early fish with an efficient
swimming style.
So while evolution took billions of years to design the first
primitive cells, salient events then began occurring in hundreds of
millions of years, a distinct quickening of the pace. When some
calamity finished off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals
inherited the Earth (although the insects might disagree). With the
emergence of the primates, progress was then measured in mere tens
of millions of years. Humanoids emerged 15 million years ago,
distinguished by walking on their hind legs, and now we're down to
millions of years.
With larger brains, particularly in the area of the highly
convoluted cortex responsible for rational thought, our own
species, Homo sapiens, emerged perhaps 500,000 years ago. Homo
sapiens are not very different from other advanced primates in
terms of their genetic heritage. Their DNA is 98.6 percent the same
as the lowland gorilla, and 97.8 percent the same as the orangutan.
The story of evolution since that time now focuses in on a
human-sponsored variant of evolution: technology.
TECHNOLOGY: EVOLUTION BY OTHER MEANS
When a scientist states that something is possible, he is almost
certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is
very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the
possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke's three laws of technology
A machine is as distinctively and brilliantly and expressively
human as a violin sonata or a theorem in Euclid.
-- Gregory Vlastos
Technology picks right up with the exponentially quickening pace of
evolution. Although not the only tool-using animal, Homo sapiens
are distinguished by their creation of technology. Technology goes
beyond the mere fashioning and use of tools. It involves a record
of tool making and a progression in the sophistication of tools. It
requires invention and is itself a continuation of evolution by
other means. The "genetic code" of the evolutionary process of
technology is the record maintained by the tool-making species.
Just as the genetic code of the early life-forms was simply the
chemical composition of the organisms themselves, the written
record of early tools consisted of the tools themselves. Later on,
the "genes" of technological evolution evolved into records using
written language and are now often stored in computer databases.
Ultimately, the technology itself will create new technology. But
we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Our story is now marked in tens of thousands of years. There were
multiple subspecies of Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
emerged about 100,000 years ago in Europe and the Middle East and
then disappeared mysteriously about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Despite their brutish image, Neanderthals cultivated an involved
culture that included elaborate funeral rituals -- burying their
dead with ornaments, including flowers. We're not entirely sure
what happened to our Homo sapiens cousins, but they apparently got
into conflict with our own immediate ancestors Homo sapiens
sapiens, who emerged about 90,000 years ago. Several species and
subspecies of humanoids initiated the creation of technology. The
most clever and aggressive of these subspecies was the only one to
survive. This established a pattern that would repeat itself
throughout human history, in that the technologically more advanced
group ends up becoming dominant. This trend may not bode well as
intelligent machines themselves surpass us in intelligence and
technological sophistication in the twenty-first century.
Our Homo sapiens sapiens subspecies was thus left alone among
humanoids about 40,000 years ago.
Our forebears had already inherited from earlier hominid species
and subspecies such innovations as the recording of events on cave
walls, pictorial art, music, dance, religion, advanced language,
fire, and weapons. For tens of thousands of years, humans had
created tools by sharpening one side of a stone. It took our
species tens of thousands of years to figure out that by sharpening
both sides, the resultant sharp edge provided a far more useful
tool. One significant point, however, is that these innovations did
occur, and they endured. No other tool-using animal on Earth has
demonstrated the ability to create and retain innovations in their
use of tools.
The other significant point is that technology, like the evolution
of life-forms that spawned it, is inherently an accelerating
process. The foundations of technology -- such as creating a sharp
edge from a stone -- took eons to perfect, although for
human-created technology, eons means thousands of years rather than
the billions of years that the evolution of life-forms required to
get started.
Like the evolution of life-forms, the pace of technology has
greatly accelerated over time. The progress of technology in the
nineteenth century, for example, greatly exceeded that of earlier
centuries, with the building of canals and great ships, the advent
of paved roads, the spread of the railroad, the development of the
telegraph, and the invention of photography, the bicycle, sewing
machine, typewriter, telephone, phonograph, motion picture,
automobile, and of course Thomas Edison's light bulb. The continued
exponential growth of technology in the first two decades of the
twentieth century matched that of the entire nineteenth century.
Today, we have major transformations in just a few years' time. As
one of many examples, the latest revolution in communications --
the World Wide Web -- didn't exist just a few years ago.
WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY?
As technology is the continuation of evolution by other means, it
shares the phenomenon of an exponentially quickening pace. The word
is derived from the Greek tekhn¯e, which means "craft" or "art,"
and logia, which means "the study of." Thus one interpretation of
technology is the study of crafting, in which crafting refers to
the shaping of resources for a practical purpose. I use the term
resources rather than materials because technology extends to the
shaping of nonmaterial resources such as information.
Technology is often defined as the creation of tools to gain
control over the environment. However, this definition is not
entirely sufficient. Humans are not alone in their use or even
creation of tools. Orangutans in Sumatra's Suaq Balimbing swamp
make tools out of long sticks to break open termite nests. Crows
fashion tools from sticks and leaves. The leaf-cutter ant mixes dry
leaves with its saliva to create a paste. Crocodiles use tree roots
to anchor dead prey.
What is uniquely human is the application of knowledge -- recorded
knowledge -- to the fashioning of tools. The knowledge base
represents the genetic code for the evolving technology. And as
technology has evolved, the means for recording this knowledge base
has also evolved, from the oral traditions of antiquity to the
written design logs of nineteenth-century craftsmen to the
computer-assisted design databases of the 1990s.
Technology also implies a transcendence of the materials used to
comprise it. When the elements of an invention are assembled in
just the right way, they produce an enchanting effect that goes
beyond the mere parts. When Alexander Graham Bell accidentally
wire-connected two moving drums and solenoids (metal cores wrapped
in wire) in 1875, the result transcended the materials he was
working with. For the first time, a human voice was transported,
magically it seemed, to a remote location. Most assemblages are
just that: random assemblies. But when materials -- and in the case
of modern technology, information -- are assembled in just the
right way, transcendence occurs. The assembled object becomes far
greater than the sum of its parts.
The same phenomenon of transcendence occurs in art, which may
properly be regarded as another form of human technology. When
wood, varnishes, and strings are assembled in just the right way,
the result is wondrous: a violin, a piano. When such a device is
manipulated in just the right way, there is magic of another sort:
music. Music goes beyond mere sound. It evokes a response --
cognitive, emotional, perhaps spiritual -- in the listener, another
form of transcendence. All of the arts share the same goal: of
communicating from artist to audience. The communication is not of
unadorned data, but of the more important items in the
phenomenological garden: feelings, ideas, experiences, longings.
The Greek meaning of tekhne logia includes art as a key
manifestation of technology.
Language is another form of human-created technology. One of the
primary applications of technology is communication, and language
provides the foundation for Homo sapiens communication.
Communication is a critical survival skill. It enabled human
families and tribes to develop cooperative strategies to overcome
obstacles and adversaries. Other animals communicate. Monkeys and
apes use elaborate gestures and grunts to communicate a variety of
messages. Bees perform intricate dances in a figure-eight pattern
to communicate where caches of nectar may be found. Female tree
frogs in Malaysia do tap dances to signal their availability. Crabs
wave their claws in one way to warn adversaries but use a different
rhythm for courtship. But these methods do not appear to evolve,
other than through the usual DNA-based evolution. These species
lack a way to record their means of communication, so the methods
remain static from one generation to the next. In contrast, human
language does evolve, as do all forms of technology. Along with the
evolving forms of language itself, technology has provided
ever-improving means for recording and distributing human language.
Homo sapiens are unique in their use and fostering of all forms of
what I regard as technology: art, language, and machines, all
representing evolution by other means. In the 1960s through 1990s,
several well-publicized primates were said to have mastered at
least childlike language skills. Chimpanzees Lana and Kanzi pressed
sequences of buttons with symbols on them. Gorillas Washoe and Koko
were said to be using American Sign Language. Many linguists are
skeptical, noting that many primate "sentences" were jumbles, such
as "Nim eat, Nim eat, drink eat me Nim, me gum me gum, tickle me,
Nim play, you me banana me banana you." Even if we view this
phenomenon more generously, it would be the exception that proves
the rule. These primates did not evolve the languages they are
credited with using, they do not appear to develop these skills
spontaneously, and their use of these skills is very limited. They
are at best participating peripherally in what is still a uniquely
human invention -- communicating using the recursive
(self-referencing), symbolic, evolving means called language.
The Inevitability of Technology
Once life takes hold on a planet, we can consider the emergence of
technology as inevitable. The ability to expand the reach of one's
physical capabilities, not to mention mental facilities, through
technology is clearly useful for survival. Technology has enabled
our subspecies to dominate its ecological niche. Technology
requires two attributes of its creator: intelligence and the
physical ability to manipulate the environment. We'll talk more in
chapter 4, "A New Form of Intelligence on Earth," about the nature
of intelligence, but it clearly represents an ability to use
limited resources optimally, including time. This ability is
inherently useful for survival, so it is favored. The ability to
manipulate the environment is also useful; otherwise an organism is
at the mercy of its environment for safety, food, and the
satisfaction of its other needs. Sooner or later, an organism is
bound to emerge with both attributes.
THE INEVITABILITY OF COMPUTATION
It is not a bad definition of man to describe him as a tool-making
animal. His earliest contrivances to support uncivilized life were
tools of the simplest and rudest construction. His latest
achievements in the substitution of machinery, not merely for the
skill of the human hand, but for the relief of the human intellect,
are founded on the use of tools of a still higher order.
-- Charles Babbage
All of the fundamental processes we have examined -- the
development of the Universe, the evolution of life-forms, the
subsequent evolution of technology -- have all progressed in an
exponential fashion, some slowing down, some speeding up. What is
the common thread here? Why did cosmology exponentially slow down
while evolution accelerated? The answers are surprising, and
fundamental to understanding the twenty-first century.
But before I attempt to answer these questions, let's examine one
other very relevant example of acceleration: the exponential growth
of computation.
Early in the evolution of life-forms, specialized organs developed
the ability to maintain internal states and respond differentially
to external stimuli. The trend ever since has been toward more
complex and capable nervous systems with the ability to store
extensive memories; recognize patterns in visual, auditory, and
tactile stimuli; and engage in increasingly sophisticated levels of
rea-soning. The ability to remember and to solve problems --
computation -- has constituted the cutting edge in the evolution of
multicellular organisms.
The same value of computation holds true in the evolution of
human-created technology. Products are more useful if they can
maintain internal states and respond differentially to varying
conditions and situations. As machines moved beyond mere implements
to extend human reach and strength, they also began to accumulate
the ability to remember and perform logical manipulations. The
simple cams, gears, and levers of the Middle Ages were assembled
into the elaborate automata of the European Renaissance. Mechanical
calculators, which first emerged in the seventeenth century, became
increasingly complex, culminating in the first automated U.S.
census in 1890. Computers played a crucial role in at least one
theater of the Second World War, and have developed in an
accelerating spiral ever since.
THE LIFE CYCLE OF A TECHNOLOGY
Technologies fight for survival, evolve, and undergo their own
characteristic life cycle. We can identify seven distinct stages.
During the precursor stage, the prerequisites of a technology
exist, and dreamers may contemplate these elements coming together.
We do not, however, regard dreaming to be the same as inventing,
even if the dreams are written down. Leonardo da Vinci drew
convincing pictures of airplanes and automobiles, but he is not
considered to have invented either.
The next stage, one highly celebrated in our culture, is invention,
a very brief stage, not dissimilar in some respects to the process
of birth after an extended period of labor. Here the inventor
blends curiosity, scientific skills, determination, and usually a
measure of showmanship to combine methods in a new way to bring a
new technology to life.
The next stage is development, during which the invention is
protected and supported by doting guardians (which may include the
original inventor). Often this stage is more crucial than invention
and may involve additional creation that can have greater
significance than the original invention. Many tinkerers had
constructed finely hand-tuned horseless carriages, but it was Henry
Ford's innovation of mass production that enabled the automobile to
take root and flourish.
The fourth stage is maturity. Although continuing to evolve, the
technology now has a life of its own and has become an independent
and established part of the community. It may become so interwoven
in the fabric of life that it appears to many observers that it
will last forever. This creates an interesting drama when the next
stage arrives, which I call the stage of the pretenders. Here an
upstart threatens to eclipse the older technology. Its enthusiasts
prematurely predict victory. While providing some distinct
benefits, the newer technology is found on reflection to be missing
some key element of functionality or quality. When it indeed fails
to dislodge the established order, the technology conservatives
take this as evidence that the original approach will indeed live
forever.
This is usually a short-lived victory for the aging technology.
Shortly thereafter, another new technology typically does succeed
in rendering the original technology into the stage of
obsolescence. In this part of the life cycle, the technology lives
out its senior years in gradual decline, its original purpose and
functionality now subsumed by a more spry competitor. This stage,
which may comprise 5 to 10 percent of the life cycle, finally
yields to antiquity (examples today: the horse and buggy, the
harpsichord, the manual typewriter, and the electromechanical
calculator).
To illustrate this, consider the phonograph record. In the
mid-nineteenth century, there were several precursors, including
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph, a device that
recorded sound vibrations as a printed pattern. It was Thomas
Edison, however, who in 1877 brought all of the elements together
and invented the first device that could record and reproduce
sound. Further refinements were necessary for the phonograph to
become commercially viable. It became a fully mature technology in
1948 when Columbia introduced the 33 revolutions-per-minute (rpm)
long-playing record (LP) and RCA Victor introduced the 45-rpm small
disc. The pretender was the cassette tape, introduced in the 1960s
and popularized during the 1970s. Early enthusiasts predicted that
its small size and ability to be rerecorded would make the
relatively bulky and scratchable record obsolete.
Despite these obvious benefits, cassettes lack random access (the
ability to play selections in a desired order) and are prone to
their own forms of distortion and lack of fidelity. In the late
1980s and early 1990s, the digital compact disc (CD) did deliver
the mortal blow. With the CD providing both random access and a
level of quality close to the limits of the human auditory system,
the phonograph record entered the stage of obsolescence in the
first half of the 1990s. Although still produced in small
quantities, the technology that Edison gave birth to more than a
century ago is now approaching antiquity.
Another example is the print book, a rather mature technology
today. It is now in the stage of the pretenders, with the
software-based "virtual" book as the pretender. Lacking the
resolution, contrast, lack of flicker, and other visual qualities
of paper and ink, the current generation of virtual book does not
have the capability of displacing paper-based publications. Yet
this victory of the paper-based book will be short-lived as future
generations of computer displays succeed in providing a fully
satisfactory alternative to paper.
The Emergence of Moore's Law
Gordon Moore, an inventor of the integrated circuit and then
chairman of Intel, noted in 1965 that the surface area of a
transistor (as etched on an integrated circuit) was being reduced
by approximately 50 percent every twelve months. In 1975, he was
widely reported to have revised this observation to eighteen
months. Moore claims that his 1975 update was to twenty-four
months, and that does appear to be a better fit to the data.
MOORE'S LAW AT WORK
Year
1972
1974
1978
1982
1985
1989
1993
1995
1997 Transistors in Intel's Latest Computer Chip*
3,500
6,000
29,000
134,000
275,000
1,200,000
3,100,000
5,500,000
7,500,000
*Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association
The result is that every two years, you can pack twice as many
transistors on an integrated circuit. This doubles both the number
of components on a chip as well as its speed. Since the cost of an
integrated circuit is fairly constant, the implication is that
every two years you can get twice as much circuitry running at
twice the speed for the same price. For many applications, that's
an effective quadrupling of the value. The observation holds true
for every type of circuit, from memory chips to computer
processors.
This insightful observation has become known as Moore's Law on
Integrated Circuits, and the remarkable phenomenon of the law has
been driving the acceleration of computing for the past forty
years. But how much longer can this go on? The chip companies have
expressed confidence in another fifteen to twenty years of Moore's
Law by continuing their practice of using increasingly higher
resolutions of optical lithography (an electronic process similar
to photographic printing) to reduce the feature size -- measured
today in millionths of a meter -- of transistors and other key
components. But then -- after almost sixty years -- this paradigm
will break down. The transistor insulators will then be just a few
atoms thick, and the conventional approach of shrinking them won't
work.
What then?
We first note that the exponential growth of computing did not
start with Moore's Law on Integrated Circuits. In the accompanying
figure, "The Exponential Growth of Computing, 1900-1998," I plotted
forty-nine notable computing machines spanning the twentieth
century on an exponential chart, in which the vertical axis
represents powers of ten in computer speed per unit cost (as
measured in the number of "calculations per second" that can be
purchased for $1,000). Each point on the graph represents one of
the machines. The first five machines used mechanical technology,
followed by three electromechanical (relay based) computers,
followed by eleven vacuum-tube machines, followed by twelve
machines using discrete transistors. Only the last eighteen
computers used integrated circuits.
I then fit a curve to the points called a fourth-order polynomial,
which allows for up to four bends. In other words, I did not try to
fit a straight line to the points, just the closest fourth-order
curve. Yet a straight line is close to what I got. A straight line
on an exponential graph means exponential growth. A careful
examination of the trend shows that the curve is actually bending
slightly upward, indicating a small exponential growth in the rate
of exponential growth. This may result from the interaction of two
different exponential trends, as I will discuss in chapter 6,
"Building New Brains." Or there may indeed be two levels of
exponential growth. Yet even if we take the more conservative view
that there is just one level of acceleration, we can see that the
exponential growth of computing did not start with Moore's Law on
Integrated Circuits, but dates back to the advent of electrical
computing at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Mechanical Computing Devices
1. 1900 Analytical Engine
2. 1908 Hollerith Tabulator
3. 1911 Monroe Calculator
4. 1919 IBM Tabulator
5. 1928 National Ellis 3000
Electromechanical (Relay Based) Computers
6. 1939 Zuse 2
7. 1940 Bell Calculator Model 1
8. 1941 Zuse 3
Vacuum-Tube Computers
9. 1943 Colossus
10. 1946 ENIAC
11. 1948 IBM SSEC
12. 1949 BINAC
13. 1949 EDSAC
14. 1951 Univac I
15. 1953 Univac 1103
16. 1953 IBM 701
17. 1954 EDVAC
18. 1955 Whirlwind
19. 1955 IBM 704
Discrete Transistor Computers
20. 1958 Datamatic 1000
21. 1958 Univac II
22. 1959 Mobidic
23. 1959 IBM 7090
24. 1960 IBM 1620
25. 1960 DEC PDP-1
26. 1961 DEC PDP-4
27. 1962 Univac III
28. 1964 CDC 6600
29. 1965 IBM 1130
30. 1965 DEC PDP-8
31. 1966 IBM 360 Model 75
Integrated Circuit Computers
32. 1968 DEC PDP-10
33. 1973 Intellec-8
34. 1973 Data General Nova
35. 1975 Altair 8800
36. 1976 DEC PDP-11 Model 70
37. 1977 Cray 1
38. 1977 Apple II
39. 1979 DEC VAX 11 Model 780
40. 1980 Sun-1
41. 1982 IBM PC
42. 1982 Compaq Portable
43. 1983 IBM AT-80286
44. 1984 Apple Macintosh
45. 1986 Compaq Deskpro 386
46. 1987 Apple Mac II
47. 1993 Pentium PC
48. 1996 Pentium PC
49. 1998 Pentium II PC
In the 1980s, a number of observers, including Carnegie Mellon
University professor Hans Moravec, Nippon Electric Company's David
Waltz, and myself, noticed that computers have been growing
exponentially in power, long before the invention of the integrated
circuit in 1958 or even the transistor in 1947. The speed and
density of computation have been doubling every three years (at the
beginning of the twentieth century) to one year (at the end of the
twentieth century), regardless of the type of hardware used.
Remarkably, this "Exponential Law of Computing" has held true for
at least a century, from the mechanical card-based electrical
computing technology used in the 1890 U.S. census, to the
relay-based computers that cracked the Nazi Enigma code, to the
vacuum-tube-based computers of the 1950s, to the transistor-based
machines of the 1960s, and to all of the generations of integrated
circuits of the past four decades. Computers are about one hundred
million times more powerful for the same unit cost than they were a
half century ago. If the automobile industry had made as much
progress in the past fifty years, a car today would cost a
hundredth of a cent and go faster than the speed of light.
As with any phenomenon of exponential growth, the increases are so
slow at first as to be virtually unnoticeable. Despite many decades
of progress since the first electrical calculating equipment was
used in the 1890 census, it was not until the mid-1960s that this
phenomenon was even noticed (although Alan Turing had an inkling of
it in 1950). Even then, it was appreciated only by a small
community of computer engineers and scientists. Today, you have
only to scan the personal computer ads -- or the toy ads -- in your
local newspaper to see the dramatic improvements in the price
performance of computation that now arrive on a monthly basis.
So Moore's Law on Integrated Circuits was not the first, but the
fifth paradigm to continue the now one-century-long exponential
growth of computing. Each new paradigm came along just when needed.
This suggests that exponential growth won't stop with the end of
Moore's Law. But the answer to our question on the continuation of
the exponential growth of computing is critical to our
understanding of the twenty-first century. So to gain a deeper
understanding of the true nature of this trend, we need to go back
to our earlier questions on the exponential nature of time.
THE LAW OF TIME AND CHAOS
Is the flow of time something real, or might our sense of time
passing be just an illusion that hides the fact that what is real
is only a vast collection of moments?
-- Lee Smolin
Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at
once.
-- Graffito
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
-- Dwight Eisenhower
Consider these diverse exponential trends:
* The exponentially slowing pace that the Universe followed, with
three epochs in the first billionth of a second, with later
salient events taking billions of years.
* The exponentially slowing pace in the development of an organism.
In the first month after conception, we grow a body, a head, even
a tail. We grow a brain in the first couple of months. After
leaving our maternal confines, our maturation both physically and
mentally is rapid at first. In the first year, we learn basic
forms of mobility and communication. We experience milestones
every month or so. Later on, key events march ever more slowly,
taking years and then decades.
* The exponentially quickening pace of the evolution of life-forms
on Earth.
* The exponentially quickening pace of the evolution of
human-created technology, which picked up the pace from the
evolution of life-forms.
* The exponential growth of computing. Note that exponential growth
of a process over time is just another way of expressing an
exponentially quickening pace. For example, it took about ninety
years to achieve the first MIP (Million Instructions per Second)
for a thousand dollars. Now we add an additional MIP per thousand
dollars every day. The overall innovation rate is clearly
accelerating as well.
* Moore's Law on Integrated Circuits. As I noted, this was the fifth
paradigm to achieve the exponential growth of computing.
Many questions come to mind:
What is the common thread between these varied exponential trends?
Why do some of these processes speed up while others slow down?
And what does this tell us about the continuation of the
exponential growth of computing when Moore's Law dies?
Is Moore's Law just a set of industry expectations and goals, as
Randy Isaac, head of basic science at IBM, contends? Or is it part
of a deeper phenomenon that goes far beyond the photolithography of
integrated circuits?
After thinking about the relationship between these apparently
diverse trends for several years, the surprising common theme
became apparent to me.
What determines whether time speeds up or slows down? The
consistent answer is that time moves in relation to the amount of
chaos. We can state the Law of Time and Chaos as follows:
The Law of Time and Chaos: In a process, the time interval between
salient events (that is, events that change the nature of the
process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands
or contracts along with the amount of chaos.
When there is a lot of chaos in a process, it takes more time for
significant events to occur. Conversely, as order increases, the
time periods between salient events decrease.
We have to be careful here in our definition of chaos. It refers to
the quantity of disordered (that is, random) events that are
relevant to the process. If we're dealing with the random movement
of atoms and molecules in a gas or liquid, then heat is an
appropriate measure. If we're dealing with the process of evolution
of life-forms, then chaos represents the unpredictable events
encountered by organisms, and the random mutations that are
introduced in the genetic code.
Let's see how the Law of Time and Chaos applies to our examples. If
chaos is increasing, the Law of Time and Chaos implies the
following sublaw:
The Law of Increasing Chaos: As chaos exponentially increases, time
exponentially slows down (that is, the time interval between
salient events grows longer as time passes).
This fits the Universe rather well. When the entire Universe was
just a "naked" singularity -- a perfectly orderly single point in
space and time -- there was no chaos and conspicuous events took
almost no time at all. As the Universe grew in size, chaos
increased exponentially, and so did the timescale for epochal
changes. Now, with billions of galaxies sprawled out over trillions
of light-years of space, the Universe contains vast reaches of
chaos, and indeed requires billions of years to get everything
organized for a paradigm shift to take place.
We see a similar phenomenon in the progression of an organism's
life. We start out as a single fertilized cell, so there's only
rather limited chaos there. Ending up with trillions of cells,
chaos greatly expands. Finally, at the end of our lives, our
designs deteriorate, engendering even greater randomness. So the
time period between salient biological events grows longer as we
grow older. And that is indeed what we experience.
But it is the opposite spiral of the Law of Time and Chaos that is
the most important and relevant for our purposes. Consider the
inverse sublaw, which I call the Law of Accelerating Returns:
The Law of Accelerating Returns: As order exponentially increases,
time exponentially speeds up (that is, the time interval between
salient events grows shorter as time passes).
The Law of Accelerating Returns (to distinguish it from a
better-known law in which returns diminish) applies specifically to
evolutionary processes. In an evolutionary process, it is order --
the opposite of chaos -- that is increasing. And, as we have seen,
time speeds up.
Disdisorder
I noted above that the concept of chaos in the Law of Time and
Chaos is tricky. Chaos alone is not sufficient -- disorder for our
purposes requires randomness that is relevant to the process we are
concerned with. The opposite of disorder -- which I called "order"
in the above Law of Accelerating Returns -- is even trickier.
Let's start with our definition of disorder and work backward. If
disorder represents a random sequence of events, then the opposite
of disorder should imply "not random." And if random means
unpredictable, then we might conclude that order means predictable.
But that would be wrong.
Borrowing a page from information theory, consider the difference
between information and noise. Information is a sequence of data
that is meaningful in a process, such as the DNA code of an
organism, or the bits in a computer program. Noise, on the other
hand, is a random sequence. Neither noise nor information is
predictable. Noise is inherently unpredictable, but carries no
information. Information, however, is also unpredictable. If we can
predict future data from past data, then that future data stops
being information. For example, consider a sequence which simply
alternates between zero and one (01010101 . . .). Such a sequence
is certainly orderly, and very predictable. Specifically because it
is so predictable, we do not consider it information bearing,
beyond the first couple of bits.
Thus orderliness does not constitute order because order requires
information. So, perhaps I should use the word information instead
of order. However, information alone is not sufficient for our
purposes either. Consider a phone book. It certainly represents a
lot of information, and some order as well. Yet if we double the
size of the phone book, we have increased the amount of data, but
we have not achieved a deeper level of order.
Order, then, is information that fits a purpose. The measure of
order is the measure of how well the information fits the purpose.
In the evolution of life-forms, the purpose is to survive. In an
evolutionary algorithm (a computer program that simulates evolution
to solve a problem) applied to, say, investing in the stock market,
the purpose is to make money. Simply having more information does
not necessarily result in a better fit. A superior solution for a
purpose may very well involve less data.
The concept of "complexity" has been used recently to describe the
nature of the information created by an evolutionary process.
Complexity is a reasonably close fit to the concept of order that I
am describing. After all, the designs created by the evolution of
life-forms on Earth appear to have become more complex over time.
However, complexity is not a perfect fit, either. Sometimes, a
deeper order -- a better fit to a purpose -- is achieved through
simplification rather than further increases in complexity. As
Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but no simpler." For example, a new theory that ties together
apparently disparate ideas into one broader, more coherent theory
reduces complexity but nonetheless may increase the "order for a
purpose" that I am describing. Evolution has shown, however, that
the general trend toward greater order does generally result in
greater complexity.
Thus improving a solution to a problem -- which may increase or
decrease complexity -- increases order. Now that just leaves the
issue of defining the problem. And as we will see, defining a
problem well is often the key to finding its solution.
The Law of Increasing Entropy Versus the Growth of Order
Another consideration is how the Law of Time and Chaos relates to
the second law of thermodynamics. Unlike the second law, the Law of
Time and Chaos is not necessarily concerned with a closed system.
It deals instead with a process. The Universe is a closed system
(not subject to outside influence, since there is nothing outside
the Universe), so in accordance with the second law of
thermodynamics, chaos increases and time slows down. In contrast,
evolution is precisely not a closed system. It takes place amid
great chaos, and indeed depends on the disorder in its midst, from
which it draws its options for diversity. And from these options,
an evolutionary process continually prunes its choices to create
ever greater order. Even a crisis that appears to introduce a
significant new source of chaos is likely to end up increasing --
deepening -- the order created by an evolutionary process. For
example, consider the asteroid that is thought to have killed off
big organisms such as the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The crash
of that asteroid suddenly created a vast increase in chaos (and
lots of dust, too). Yet it appears to have hastened the rise of
mammals in the niche previously dominated by large reptiles and
ultimately led to the emergence of a technology-creating species.
When the dust settled (literally), the crisis of the asteroid had
increased order.
As I pointed out earlier, only a tiny fraction of the stuff in the
Universe, or even on a life- and technology-bearing planet such as
Earth, can be considered to be part of evolution's inventions. Thus
evolution does not contradict the Law of Increasing Entropy.
Indeed, it depends on it to provide a never-ending supply of
options.
As I noted, given the emergence of life, the emergence of a
technology-creating species -- and of technology -- is inevitable.
Technology is the continuation of evolution by other means, and is
itself an evolutionary process. So it, too, speeds up.
A primary reason that evolution -- of life-forms or of technology
-- speeds up is that it builds on its own increasing order.
Innovations created by evolution encourage and enable faster
evolution. In the case of the evolution of life-forms, the most
notable example is DNA, which provides a recorded and protected
transcription of life's design from which to launch further
experiments.
In the case of the evolution of technology, ever improving human
methods of recording information have fostered further technology.
The first computers were designed on paper and assembled by hand.
Today, they are designed on computer workstations with the
computers themselves working out many details of the next
generation's design, and are then produced in fully automated
factories with human guidance but limited direct intervention.
The evolutionary process of technology seeks to improve
capabilities in an exponential fashion. Innovators seek to improve
things by multiples. Innovation is multiplicative, not additive.
Technology, like any evolutionary process, builds on itself. This
aspect will continue to accelerate when the technology itself takes
full control of its own progression.
We can thus conclude the following with regard to the evolution of
life-forms, and of technology:
The Law of Accelerating Returns as Applied to an Evolutionary
Process:
* An evolutionary process is not a closed system; therefore,
evolution draws upon the chaos in the larger system in which it
takes place for its options for diversity; and
* Evolution builds on its own increasing order.
Therefore:
* In an evolutionary process, order increases exponentially.
Therefore:
* Time exponentially speeds up.
Therefore:
* The returns (that is, the valuable products of the process)
accelerate.
The phenomenon of time slowing down and speeding up is occurring
simultaneously. Cosmologically speaking, the Universe continues to
slow down. Evolution, now most noticeably in the form of
human-created technology, continues to speed up. These are the two
sides -- two interleaved spirals -- of the Law of Time and Chaos.
The spiral we are most interested in -- the Law of Accelerating
Returns -- gives us ever greater order in technology, which
inevitably leads to the emergence of computation. Computation is
the essence of order. It provides the ability for a technology to
respond in a variable and appropriate manner to its environment to
carry out its mission. Thus computational technology is also an
evolutionary process, and also builds on its own progress. The time
to accomplish a fixed objective gets exponentially shorter over
time (for example, ninety years for the first MIP per thousand
dollars versus one day for an additional MIP today). That the power
of computing grows exponentially over time is just another way to
say the same thing.
So Where Does That Leave Moore's Law?
Well, it still leaves it dead by the year 2020. Moore's Law came
along in 1958 just when it was needed and will have done its sixty
years of service by 2018, a rather long period of time for a
paradigm nowadays. Unlike Moore's Law, however, the Law of
Accelerating Returns is not a temporary methodology. It is a basic
attribute of the nature of time and chaos -- a sublaw of the Law of
Time and Chaos -- and describes a wide range of apparently
divergent phenomena and trends. In accordance with the Law of
Accelerating Returns, another computational technology will pick up
where Moore's Law will have left off, without missing a beat.
Most Exponential Trends Hit a Wall . . . but Not This One
A frequent criticism of predictions of the future is that they rely
on mindless extrapolation of current trends without consideration
of forces that may terminate or alter that trend. This criticism is
particularly relevant in the case of exponential trends. A classic
example is a species happening upon a hospitable new habitat,
perhaps transplanted there by human intervention (rabbits in
Australia, say). Its numbers multiply exponentially for a while,
but this phenomenon is quickly terminated when the exploding
population runs into a new predator or the limits of its
environment. Similarly, the geometric population growth of our own
species has been a source of anxiety, but changing social and
economic factors, including growing prosperity, have greatly slowed
this expansion in recent years, even in developing countries.
Based on this, some observers are quick to predict the demise of
the exponential growth of computing.
But the growth predicted by the Law of Accelerating Returns is an
exception to the frequently cited limitations to exponential
growth. Even a catastrophe, as apparently befell our reptilian
cohabitants in the late Cretaceous period, only sidesteps an
evolutionary process, which then picks up the pieces and continues
unabated (unless the entire process is wiped out). An evolutionary
process accelerates because it builds on its past achievements,
which includes improvements in its own means for further evolution.
In the evolution of life-forms, in addition to DNA-based genetic
coding, the innovation of sexual reproduction provided for improved
means of experimenting with diverse characteristics within an
otherwise homogenous population. The establishment of basic body
plans of modern animals in the "Cambrian explosion," about 570
million years ago, allowed evolution to concentrate on higher-level
features such as expanded brain function. The inventions of
evolution in one era provide the means, and often the intelligence,
for innovation in the next.
The Law of Accelerating Returns applies equally to the evolutionary
process of computation, which inherently will grow exponentially
and essentially without limit. The two resources it needs -- the
growing order of the evolving technology itself and the chaos from
which an evolutionary process draws its options for further
diversity -- are unbounded. Ultimately, the innovation needed for
further turns of the screw will come from the machines themselves.
How will the power of computing continue to accelerate after
Moore's Law dies? We are just beginning to explore the third
dimension in chip design. The vast majority of today's chips are
flat, whereas our brain is organized in three dimensions. We live
in a three-dimensional world, so why not use the third dimension?
Improvements in semiconductor materials, including superconducting
circuits that don't generate heat, will enable us to develop chips
-- that is, cubes -- with thousands of layers of circuitry that,
combined with far smaller component geometries, will improve
computing power by a factor of many millions. And there are more
than enough other new computing technologies waiting in the wings
-- nanotube, optical, crystalline, DNA, and quantum (which we'll
visit in chapter 6, "Building New Brains") -- to keep the Law of
Accelerating Returns going in the world of computation for a very
long time.
THE LEARNING CURVE: SLUG VERSUS HUMAN
The "learning curve" describes the mastery of a skill over time. As
an entity -- slug or human -- learns a new skill, the newly
acquired ability builds on itself, and so the learning curve starts
out looking like the exponential growth we see in the Law of
Accelerating Returns. Skills tend to be bounded, so as the new
expertise is mastered, the law of diminishing returns sets in, and
growth in mastery levels off. So the learning curve is what we call
an S curve because exponential growth followed by a leveling off
looks like an S leaning slightly to the right: S.
The learning curve is remarkably universal: Most multicellular
creatures do it. Slugs, for example, follow the learning curve when
learning how to ascend a new tree in search of leaves. Humans, of
course, are always learning something new.
But there's a salient difference between humans and slugs. Humans
are capable of innovation, which is the creation and retention of
new skills and knowledge. Innovation is the driving force in the
Law of Accelerating Returns, and eliminates the leveling-off part
of the S curve. So innovation turns the S curve into indefinite
exponential expansion.
Overcoming the S curve is another way to express the unique status
of the human species. No other species appears to do this. Why are
we unique in this way, given that other primates are so close to us
in terms of genetic similarity?
The reason is that the ability to overcome the S curve defines a
new ecological niche. As I pointed out, there were indeed other
humanoid species and subspecies capable of innovation, but the
niche seems to have tolerated only one surviving competitor. But we
will have company in the twenty-first century as our machines join
us in this exclusive niche.
A Planetary Affair
The introduction of technology on Earth is not merely the private
affair of one of the Earth's innumerable species. It is a pivotal
event in the history of the planet. Evolution's grandest creation
-- human intelligence -- is providing the means for the next stage
of evolution, which is technology. The emergence of technology is
predicted by the Law of Accelerating Returns. The Homo sapiens
sapiens subspecies emerged only tens of thousands of years after
its human forebears. According to the Law of Accelerating Returns,
the next stage of evolution should measure its salient events in
mere thousands of years, too quick for DNA-based evolution. This
next stage of evolution was necessarily created by human
intelligence itself, another example of the exponential engine of
evolution using its innovations from one period (human beings) to
create the next (intelligent machines).
Evolution draws upon the great chaos in its midst -- the ever
increasing entropy governed by the flip side of the Law of Time and
Chaos -- for its options for innovation. These two strands of the
Law of Time and Chaos -- time exponentially slowing down due to the
increasing chaos predicted by the second law of thermodynamics; and
time exponentially speeding up due to the increasing order created
by evolution -- coexist and progress without limit. In particular,
the resources of evolution, order and chaos, are unbounded. I
stress this point because it is crucial to understanding the
evolutionary -- and revolutionary -- nature of computer technology.
The emergence of technology was a milestone in the evolution of
intelligence on Earth because it represented a new means of
evolution recording its designs. The next milestone will be
technology creating its own next generation without human
intervention. That there is only a period of tens of thousands of
years between these two milestones is another example of the
exponentially quickening pace that is evolution.
The Inventor of Chess and the Emperor of China
To appreciate the implications of this (or any) geometric trend, it
is useful to recall the legend of the inventor of chess and his
patron, the emperor of China. The emperor had so fallen in love
with his new game that he offered the inventor a reward of anything
he wanted in the kingdom.
"Just one grain of rice on the first square, Your Majesty."
"Just one grain of rice?"
"Yes, Your Majesty, just one grain of rice on the first square, and
two grains of rice on the second square."
"That's it -- one and two grains of rice?"
"Well, okay, and four grains on the third square, and so on."
The emperor immediately granted the inventor's seemingly humble
request. One version of the story has the emperor going bankrupt
because the doubling of grains of rice for each square ultimately
equaled 18 million trillion grains of rice. At ten grains of rice
per square inch, this requires rice fields covering twice the
surface area of the Earth, oceans included.
The other version of the story has the inventor losing his head.
It's not yet clear which outcome we're headed for.
But there is one thing we should note: It was fairly uneventful as
the emperor and the inventor went through the first half of the
chessboard. After thirty-two squares, the emperor had given the
inventor about 4 billion grains of rice. That's a reasonable
quantity -- about one large field's worth -- and the emperor did
start to take notice.
But the emperor could still remain an emperor. And the inventor
could still retain his head. It was as they headed into the second
half of the chessboard that at least one of them got into trouble.
So where do we stand now? There have been about thirty-two
doublings of speed and capacity since the first operating computers
were built in the 1940s. Where we stand right now is that we have
finished the first half of the chessboard. And, indeed, people are
starting to take notice.
Now, as we head into the next century, we are heading into the
second half of the chessboard. And this is where things start to
get interesting.
OKAY, LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT, MY CONCEPTION AS A FERTILIZED EGG
WAS LIKE THE UNIVERSE'S BIG BANG -- UH, NO PUN INTENDED -- THAT IS,
THINGS STARTED OUT HAPPENING VERY FAST, THEN KIND OF SLOWED DOWN,
AND NOW THEY'RE REAL SLOW?
That's a reasonable way to put it, the time interval now between
milestones is a lot longer than it was when you were an infant, let
alone a fetus.
YOU MENTIONED THE UNIVERSE HAD THREE PARADIGM SHIFTS IN THE FIRST
BILLIONTH OF A SECOND. WERE THINGS THAT FAST WHEN I GOT STARTED?
Not quite that fast. The Universe started as a singularity, a
single point taking up no space and comprising, therefore, no
chaos. So the first major event, which was the creation of the
Universe, took no time at all. With the Universe still very small,
events unfolded extremely quickly. We don't start out as a single
point, but as a rather complex cell. It has order but there is a
lot of random activity within a cell compared to a single point in
space. So our first major event as an organism, which is the first
mitosis of our fertilized egg, is measured in hours, not
trillionths of a second. Things slow down from there.
BUT I FEEL LIKE TIME IS SPEEDING UP. THE YEARS JUST GO BY SO MUCH
FASTER NOW THAN THEY DID WHEN I WAS A KID. DON'T YOU HAVE IT
BACKWARD?
Yes, well, the subjective experience is the opposite of the
objective reality.
OF COURSE. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?
Let me clarify what I mean. The objective reality is the reality of
the outside observer observing the process. If we observe the
development of an individual, salient events happen very quickly at
first, but later on milestones are more spread out, so we say time
is slowing down. The subjective experience, however, is the
experience of the process itself, assuming, of course, that the
process is conscious. Which in your case, it is. At least, I assume
that's the case.
THANK YOU.
Subjectively, our perception of time is affected by the spacing of
milestones.
MILESTONES?
Yeah, like growing a body and a brain.
AND BEING BORN?
Sure, that's a milestone. Then learning to sit up, walking, talking
. . .
OKAY.
We can consider each subjective unit of time to be equivalent to
one milestone spacing. Since our milestones are spaced further
apart as we grow older, a subjective unit of time will represent a
longer span of time for an adult than for a child. Thus time feels
like it is passing by more quickly as we grow older. That is, an
interval of a few years as an adult may be perceived as comparable
to a few months to a young child. Thus a long interval to an adult
and a short interval to a child both represent the same subjective
time in terms of the passage of salient events. Of course, long and
short intervals also represent comparable fractions of their
respective past lives.
SO DOES THAT EXPLAIN WHY TIME PASSES MORE QUICKLY WHEN I'M HAVING A
GOOD TIME?
Well, it may be relevant to one phenomenon. If someone goes through
an experience in which a lot of significant events occur, that
experience may feel like a much longer period of time than a calmer
period. Again, we measure subjective time in terms of salient
experiences.
NOW IF I FIND TIME SPEEDING UP WHEN OBJECTIVELY IT IS SLOWING DOWN,
THEN EVOLUTION WOULD SUBJECTIVELY FIND TIME SLOWING DOWN AS IT
OBJECTIVELY SPEEDS UP, DO I HAVE THAT STRAIGHT?
Yes, if evolution were conscious.
WELL, IS IT?
There's no way to really tell, but evolution has its time spiral
going in the opposite direction from entities we generally consider
to be conscious, such as humans. In other words, evolution starts
out slow and speeds up over time, whereas the development of a
person starts out fast and then slows down. The Universe, however,
does have its time spiral going in the same direction as us
organisms, so it would make more sense to say that the Universe is
conscious. And come to think of it, that does shed some light on
what happened before the big bang.
I WAS JUST WONDERING ABOUT THAT.
As we look back in time and get closer to the event of the big
bang, chaos is shrinking to zero. Thus from the subjective
perspective, time is stretching out. Indeed, as we go back in time
and approach the big bang, subjective time approaches infinity.
Thus it is not possible to go back past a subjective infinity of
time.
THAT'S A LOAD OFF MY MIND. NOW YOU SAID THAT THE EXPONENTIAL
PROGRESS OF AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS GOES ON FOREVER. IS THERE
ANYTHING THAT CAN STOP IT?
Only a catastrophe that wipes out the entire process.
SUCH AS AN ALL-OUT NUCLEAR WAR?
That's one scenario, but in the next century, we will encounter a
plethora of other "failure modes." We'll talk about this in later
chapters.
I CAN'T WAIT. NOW TELL ME THIS, WHAT DOES THE LAW OF ACCELERATING
RETURNS HAVE TO DO WITH THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?
Exponential trends are immensely powerful but deceptive. They
linger for eons with very little effect. But once they reach the
"knee of the curve," they explode with unrelenting fury. With
regard to computer technology and its impact on human society, that
knee is approaching with the new millennium. Now I have a question
for you.
SHOOT.
Just who are you anyway?
WHY, I'M THE READER.
Of course. Well, it's good to have you contributing to the book
while there's still time to do something about it.
GLAD TO. NOW, YOU NEVER DID GIVE THE ENDING TO THE EMPEROR STORY.
SO DOES THE EMPEROR LOSE HIS EMPIRE, OR DOES THE INVENTOR LOSE HIS
HEAD?
I have two endings, so I just can't say.
MAYBE THEY REACH A COMPROMISE SOLUTION. THE INVENTOR MIGHT BE HAPPY
TO SETTLE FOR, SAY, JUST ONE PROVINCE OF CHINA.
Yes, that would be a good result. And maybe an even better parable
for the twenty-first century.
(C) 1998 Ray Kurzweil All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-670-88217-8
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
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