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Accelerating change
In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change.
In 1910, during the town planning conference of London, Daniel Burnham noted, "But it is not merely in the number of facts or sorts of knowledge that progress lies: it is still more in the geometric ratio of sophistication, in the geometric widening of the sphere of knowledge, which every year is taking in a larger percentage of people as time goes on." And later on, "It is the argument with which I began, that a mighty change having come about in fifty years, and our pace of development having immensely accelerated, our sons and grandsons are going to demand and get results that would stagger us."
In 1938, Buckminster Fuller introduced the word ephemeralization to describe the trends of "doing more with less" in chemistry, health and other areas of industrial development. In 1946, Fuller published a chart of the discoveries of the chemical elements over time to highlight the development of accelerating acceleration in human knowledge acquisition.
By mid-century, for Arnold J. Toynbee it was "not an article of faith" but "a datum of observation and experience history" that history was accelerating, and "at an accelerating rate".
In 1958, Stanislaw Ulam wrote in reference to a conversation with John von Neumann:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.
In a series of published articles from 1974 to 1979, and then in his 1988 book Mind Children, computer scientist and futurist Hans Moravec generalized Moore's law to make predictions about the future of artificial life. Moore's law describes an exponential growth pattern in the complexity of integrated semiconductor circuits. Moravec extended this to include technologies from long before the integrated circuit to future forms of technology. Moravec outlined a timeline and a scenario in which robots could evolve into a new series of artificial species, starting around 2030–2040.
In his TV series Connections (1978)—and sequels Connections2 (1994) and Connections3 (1997)—James Burke explores an "Alternative View of Change" (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own motivations (e.g., profit, curiosity, religious) with no concept of the final, modern result to which the actions of either them or their contemporaries would lead. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.
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Accelerating change
In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change.
In 1910, during the town planning conference of London, Daniel Burnham noted, "But it is not merely in the number of facts or sorts of knowledge that progress lies: it is still more in the geometric ratio of sophistication, in the geometric widening of the sphere of knowledge, which every year is taking in a larger percentage of people as time goes on." And later on, "It is the argument with which I began, that a mighty change having come about in fifty years, and our pace of development having immensely accelerated, our sons and grandsons are going to demand and get results that would stagger us."
In 1938, Buckminster Fuller introduced the word ephemeralization to describe the trends of "doing more with less" in chemistry, health and other areas of industrial development. In 1946, Fuller published a chart of the discoveries of the chemical elements over time to highlight the development of accelerating acceleration in human knowledge acquisition.
By mid-century, for Arnold J. Toynbee it was "not an article of faith" but "a datum of observation and experience history" that history was accelerating, and "at an accelerating rate".
In 1958, Stanislaw Ulam wrote in reference to a conversation with John von Neumann:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.
In a series of published articles from 1974 to 1979, and then in his 1988 book Mind Children, computer scientist and futurist Hans Moravec generalized Moore's law to make predictions about the future of artificial life. Moore's law describes an exponential growth pattern in the complexity of integrated semiconductor circuits. Moravec extended this to include technologies from long before the integrated circuit to future forms of technology. Moravec outlined a timeline and a scenario in which robots could evolve into a new series of artificial species, starting around 2030–2040.
In his TV series Connections (1978)—and sequels Connections2 (1994) and Connections3 (1997)—James Burke explores an "Alternative View of Change" (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own motivations (e.g., profit, curiosity, religious) with no concept of the final, modern result to which the actions of either them or their contemporaries would lead. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.