{"id":47533,"date":"2022-08-11T11:23:30","date_gmt":"2022-08-11T09:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/?p=47533"},"modified":"2025-11-18T14:40:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:40:55","slug":"what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Driving the Exponential Increase in Technology?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Find out more about the exponential increase in digital technology from the Faculty Directors in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/products\/mit-sloan-digital-business-strategy-harnessing-our-digital-future-online-short-course\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Digital Business Strategy: Harnessing Our Digital Future<\/a> online short course from the MIT Sloan School of Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What is Driving the Pace of Change? | MIT Sloan\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KkFsCiV4nT4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1965 Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, stated that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles about every two years, though the cost of computers is halved. For the last half a century, this prediction has been remarkably accurate and the potential of digital technology has been exponentially increasing. As a result, digital transformation has seen unprecedented innovations in the last few years. From apps to AI, the wave of technology-fueled disruption has already transformed many industries.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>So, Andy, you and I are lucky enough to be here at MIT, and we\u2019re surrounded by technologists. And I think we\u2019ve seen how technology has been the catalyst for these huge changes and, probably, there\u2019s been no catalyst more important than Moore\u2019s Law. For over 50 years now, the number of transistors you can put on a chip has been doubling about every 18 to 24 months. And that means the power of computing that you can get for a dollar has been dropping by 50 percent, year in and year out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like clockwork, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like clockwork, exactly. And, you know, Gordon Moore predicted this back in the 1960s, and amazingly it\u2019s been continuing more or less to the present day. And because of that, we have so much more computer power available today than we did 10, 20, or 30 years ago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I completely agree, \u201ccatalyst\u201d is the perfect word to describe Moore\u2019s Law. I think it\u2019s probably the single most important thing that\u2019s been happening in the global economy over the past half a century or more. But it brings up an interesting point: like you say, Moore\u2019s Law has been going on for more than half a century, but we\u2019re just seeing all these weird science fiction technologies \u2014 self-driving cars \u2014 in the past few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And our MIT colleague, Ray Kurzweil, has the single best story to illustrate how hard it is for human beings to understand the exponential function. It also helps us understand why we\u2019re seeing all these crazy examples of science fiction technology now, even though Moore\u2019s Law has been going on for over half a century.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So this is a really powerful story that we heard from Ray, and it\u2019s a story about the inventor of the game of chess. This is an apocryphal story, and it goes that the inventor took his creation to the emperor of India and demonstrated this beautiful, elegant strategy game, and the emperor was so impressed that he said, \u201cWow, you can name your own reward.\u201d And the inventor said, \u201cYour Majesty, I\u2019m a humble person, all I want is some rice to go feed my family. And we\u2019ll figure out how much rice by putting one grain on the first square of my chessboard. And we\u2019ll double that, we\u2019ll put two grains on the second square of my chessboard. We\u2019ll double that, we\u2019ll put four grains on the third square of my chessboard. Give me all 64 squares\u2019 worth of rice and I\u2019ll go home happy.\u201d So you see the analogy to Moore\u2019s Law is this constant doubling.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Doubling each with each square. There\u2019s what, 64 squares, eight-by-eight?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The emperor thinks that\u2019s a pretty fair deal, so he says make it so. It turns out that if you actually do that doubling for all 64 squares you wind up with a pile of rice that is physically bigger than Mount Everest. It\u2019s more rice than has been produced in the history of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Ray makes the further point that the doubling only really gets into crazy numbers in the second half of the chessboard. It turns out if you do 32 squares\u2019 worth of doubling you wind up with something like four billion grains of rice. It\u2019s only in the second half of the chessboard that the numbers get staggeringly big.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We looked up when the United States government started tracking this new thing called information technology as a category of stuff that a business could invest in. And that was in about 1958 \u2014 first time you see the words \u201cinformation technology\u201d in the national statistics. So we\u2019ll take that as the start, and then you and I said let\u2019s take a year and a half as the doubling period. When did we enter the second half of the chessboard, with the business use of digital technologies? We shouldn\u2019t read too much into it, but it helps us understand the smartphone era, self-driving cars, drones, computer Go champions \u2014 all these crazy sci-fi technologies, they\u2019re second-half-of-the-chessboard technologies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a silly story, but it\u2019s also a very serious one because a lot of people say, \u201cWell, Moore\u2019s Law just keeps doubling. Why are we suddenly seeing this takeoff?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you believe this analogy at all, then you have to conclude that we\u2019re early in the stages of the second half of the chessboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Find out more about the exponential increase in digital technology from the Faculty Directors in the Digital Business Strategy: Harnessing Our Digital Future online short course from the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 1965 Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, stated that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles about every two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":47534,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[122,120],"article-format":[],"class_list":["post-47533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-market-trends","tag-business-management","tag-systems-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is Driving the Exponential Increase in Technology? - GetSmarter Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Faculty Directors in the Digital Business Strategy online short course from MIT Sloan, discuss the exponential increase in digital technology.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Driving the Exponential Increase in Technology?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Faculty Directors in the Digital Business Strategy online short course from MIT Sloan, discuss the exponential increase in digital technology.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"GetSmarter Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-08-11T09:23:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-18T12:40:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/What-is-Driving-the-Pace-of-Change__blog_header-image-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"844\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aaminah Allie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"GetSmarter Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Aaminah Allie\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/dd2f83fcd9d19a49e609bf9329d13186\"},\"headline\":\"What is Driving the Exponential Increase in Technology?\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-08-11T09:23:30+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-11-18T12:40:55+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":886,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/what-is-driving-the-exponential-increase-in-technology\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2022\\\/07\\\/What-is-Driving-the-Pace-of-Change__blog_header-image-1.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Business &amp; 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