
The Law of Accelerating Returns
The Law of Accelerating Returns (LOAR) is a principle that states that the speed of technological development tends to accelerate over time. This has been observed in a wide range of technologies in both biological and non-biological domains. The law was first proposed by Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and scientist who has had a major impact on modern technology with his inventions such as speech recognition software, optical character recognition software, and text-to-speech synthesisers. He is currently working on artificial intelligence for Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.
The Law of Accelerating Returns is an idea that describes the exponential growth of technology, and how it will affect our lives in the future. If you’re not familiar with it yet, this article will help explain what it is and why it matters.
The concept was first introduced by Ray Kurzweil in his book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005). It states that technological progress tends to follow an exponential curve rather than a linear one; as we add more time into our history, technology progresses at an increasing rate–like compound interest on money invested in the bank. As such, we can expect technological evolution to continue at its current pace until all humanity has been uploaded into cyberspace or some other form of virtual reality.*
Moore’s Law
Moore’s Law is an observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. It was first formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965.…
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