Will Moore's law ever slow down?
Moore's Law: The number of transistors on a chip would double every two years. The prediction was an elegant statement of how semiconductor chips would become cheaper, faster, smaller and more reliable over time.
"It became an almost religious faith in human ingenuity and a belief in the future," said Carver Mead, the former professor at the California Institute of Technology who coined the term "Moore's Law." "It spoiled everyone into thinking that this would go on forever." By most accounts, Moore's Law will collide with the laws of physics sometime in the next 15 years. That's when it will become physically impossible to squeeze more transistors onto a single silicon chip. Maybe though it will be for the best.
We have become so used to the idea of throwing away our technical efforts every year or two that "long term" has been redefined into absurdity. If Moore's Law was gone, all that would change, and we might find ourselves building data structures of enduring quality. We won't be wearing computers in our jackets, we'll be living in a world that has taken the true potential of computing into its heart. Rather than standing on a street corner asking my jacket to tell me the weather forecast, I'll ask a street light or a parking meter. Anything that has power should become a networked device and as a part of the public infrastructure, should be an entry point to the store of public knowledge.
Think about it. A parking meter as a networked device could be used by hundreds of people per day, which is a heck of a lot more cost-effective than wearing a computer suit. And it wouldn't even be that hard to do. But it won't work at all if we have to buy a new parking meter every 18 months. And that's why I am eager for the end of Moore's Law, for a time when we can stop building gizmos and start using digital technology in an enduring way.
I'm not saying we'll return to the age of building great cathedrals, but at least we'll have the right bricks and mortar should we decide to