The Second Half of the Chessboard — Understanding Exponential Leaps Forward in Tech
Chess is a beautiful game. The rules are simple, yet the combinations of moves and strategies can be quite complex.
Understanding it’s founding story, can help us appreciate how far we have come with technology and where we are heading.
The legend goes that the inventor took his creation to the emperor of India and showed him the game. The emperor was so impressed by the beauty and elegance of the game of chess that he said you can name your own reward.
The inventor then says “your majesty I am a humble man, all I want is a pile of rice. Put one grain of rice on the first square of this chessboard. Double that, and place 2 grains of rice on the second square, double that, continue on and on and when we have all 64 squares full of rice just give me that quantity of rice.”
And the emperor says “You really are a humble man, as you wish.” He instructs his servants to start filling up the chessboard with rice. As this is happening the emperor realizes how much trouble he is in. He has been tricked by the inventor.
What do you mean tricked? That seems like a reasonable request.
Well not exactly…
As you continue to double the amount of rice, the numbers start getting larger and larger. This constant doubling, or exponential growth can reach numbers that stretch beyond the realms of the human experience, and cognition.
The constant doubling begins to add up over time and it reaches numbers that are absolutely staggering to the imagination.
After the first few squares you have 1, 2, 4, 8,16, 32, 64 ; which seems reasonable. These numbers are increasing in a relatively linear fashion.
After 32 squares, there are 2,147,483,648 (a few billion grains of rice) which is a lot, but that is about how much you would get from harvesting one large field.
It is only when you get into the second half of the chessboard that the numbers begin to be astronomically large, and each leap from one square to the next becomes colossal..
By the time they have covered 64 squares of the chessboard, there is a pile of rice bigger than mount everest. Which is far more rice than has ever been produced in the history of the world. Crazy, right?
When the emperor realizes how badly he has been tricked, he orders his servant to behead the inventor.
Now why is this story relevant; I believe this story perfectly captures the rate and pace of change in technological advancement in the world today. Understanding the rate of change in technology, like chess, seems simple at first, but upon deeper reflection is actually quite complex.
We can draw interesting insights from the three core laws of technological advancement:
First off, we have Moore’s law — which states that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every 18 months. Second, Kryder’s Law, which states that data storage cost decreases by 50% every 18 months. Finally, there is Hendy’s law, which argues that pixel costs per dollar are getting better at a rate of 59% per year. Understanding the connection between these three laws is important when trying to grasp where we are on the technological chessboard today.
It has been over 50 years since Gordon Moore came out with his paper in 1965 and during that time, we have had between 30–34 doubling periods, depending on how you define the length of time for doubling in Moore’s Law.
It is quite easy to conclude that over time technology has gotten better, cheaper and more efficient. The results of this are all around us, the iphone you hold in your hand today has more computing power than NASA has to work with in the 60’s.
We are beginning to enter the second half of the technology innovation chessboard. We will soon start experiencing exponential growth, rather than linear growth.
As seen in the chart below put together by BlackRock, technological adoption rates have also started to see this exponential decrease in time of adoption.
It took Facebook 3.5 years to acquire 50 million customers, Whatsapp 15 months and Angry Birds only 15 days.
Technological adoption rates are increasing exponentially and in shorter time frames.
I believe that the next frontier of innovation will be ushered in by blockchain technology at a rate of change that will catch most people off guard. Not only will traditional industries be disrupted, but the very foundation of the internet will likely change.
As we begin our march forward into the second half of the chess board, how are you preparing yourself to fit into the future?
References: https://www.zmescience.com/research/technology/smartphone-power-compared-to-apollo-432/