Not all things double every 18 months
Although computing power and data are rising exponentially, this doesn’t mean that digitisation will solve the world’s problems in an instant, says Roland Siegwart.
I was recently at Swiss Startup Day where I attended a video presentation given by Peter Diamandis. This charismatic American is founder and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, which runs competitions to award technical and scientific breakthroughs. Diamandis gave a flowery explanation of the “disruptive innovation" made possible by the exponential increase in computing power and volume of available data. He referred to Moore’s Law, which shows how processing power per microchip has doubled roughly every 18 months since 1971.
This phenomenon has been the driving force behind digitisation; today’s cell phones have more computing power than NASA used to fly astronauts to the moon in the 1960s. It’s a development that enables entirely new business models, such as Google Maps, AirBnB and Uber, which help make our lives easier and more efficient.
Different laws for the real world
Pioneers of Silicon Valley such as Peter Diamandis and Elon Musk, who have grown powerful and famous on the back of such exponential development, now believe they can solve all the world’s problems in the same way. But their euphoric prognoses and visions are all too often just hot air and self-portrayals; the real world has different laws from the world of data. Even if computers do achieve the computing power of the human brain by 2023, they certainly won’t rival humans for intelligence and creativity.
"Energy density of batteries and yields from farmland have physical limits that cannot simply be dispelled by sweeping promises."Roland Siegwart
Unfortunately, the scientific laws for energy, nutrition or climate change don’t reflect the exponential laws of the computer world. You can't drive twice as far with a litre of petrol every 18 months, nor can you double the yield from the same agricultural plot every 18 months through technological advances.
Progress in developing better batteries for electric cars, smartphones or hearing aids, is also lamentably slow: the energy density (stored energy per kilogram) of the lithium-ion batteries used in these systems hasn’t even doubled in the last 10 years. Despite the many spectacular results from the research labs, we’re unlikely in the next few years to see any new battery concepts that could drive energy density up exponentially. Energy density of batteries and yields from farmland have physical limits that cannot simply be dispelled by sweeping promises. So while digitisation may help make vehicles, electricity grids or agriculture more efficient and sustainable, it will be in small steps rather than large strides.
Great gains
We urgently need progress in fields such as global food supply, climate change and sustainable energy supply – and this calls for extensive research and development, and a social rethink. On these crucial issues, it will not be disruptive steps that speedily fill company coffers. Real investments in the future are long-term and capital-intensive; instead of generating enormous profits, they create a better world. It would be wonderful if IT companies and their visionary pioneers were to devote their exponentially growing profits more to the exponentially growing problems of our world, in order to solve the real challenges facing mankind. Because a better world would indeed be a great gain.
This text was published also in the NZZ.