Surviving in a World of Exponential Change - Part 1
Human adaptability
Humans are arguably the most adaptive species on the planet. We can see it by examining the vast regions we have been able to live in as well as the size of our population. We were able to adapt to massive climate shifts, fight off larger predators, and live in everything from the cold, vast arctic to blazingly hot and arid deserts.
Much of this adaptability comes from our ability to develop tools and technology to master our environment. Some of the earliest recorded evidence of our use of tools date back to 3.4 million years ago with the discovery of cut-marked bones in Ethiopia. From the bones, it appears that sharp tools were used to cut the flesh from the bone and access the marrow inside.
Our ability to harness fire dates back to approximately one million years ago. This was the first time that we leaped beyond other species within the hominids. This ability set us on a trajectory to have tools hardened with fire, warmth from the cold, and protection from predators, among others.
Fast forward almost a million years and we just began to form large cities and civilizations. Sumer is the earliest known complex civilization, which formed approximately 5,500 years ago. From what we know, Sumerians understood geometry, astronomy, construction, and they developed agriculture and irrigation on a large scale. They also created societal systems such as legal, administrative, and trade. These skills were needed for the growing population of Sumer, which would be around one million.
Think about the scale of time in which humanity went from first using a tool to developing the first civilizations. The range was from approximately 3.4 million to 5,500 years ago. Many generations had come and gone, passing down the knowledge and letting it slowly evolve. Technological advancement was something that took time, sometimes tens or hundreds or even thousands of generations.
The Growth of Civilizations
Once we began developing complex civilizations, we were able to support larger populations. If we were to trace the evolution of society and the rate of advancement, we will see that the curve of population growth started an exponential rise starting just after urban civilizations were formed around the Bronze Age. Record-keeping, monetary systems, hierarchical structures, metalworking, and more enabled our species to go from nomadic tribes that required expeditions across vast expanses to survive, to one where we could settle, long-term, in river valleys, coastal regions, and more. We were able to control our environment to grow populations and manage our survival on a grand scale.
As we crossed into the Bronze Age, around 3,500 years ago, these localized civilizations expanded into empires. One of the first being the Akkadian Empire. This saw the merger of Sumerian and Akkadian cultures. This is also the period in which the Egyptian empire rose to prominence. New religions were formed and with it, the ability to manage larger societies was enabled. Even still, these changes and adaptations from a civilizational level happened over the courses of hundreds or thousands of years.
Jumping ahead to the “modern” era, we reach the period in which steep increases in population, economic growth, and technological change were all starting to occur. As early as the 1500s, the scientific revolution began to rapidly spread. This led to the enlightenment period and set humanity on an exponential course that turned a world population from that of 500 million in the 1500s, to almost 8 billion in 2019. One of the largest contributing factors was the use of science and technology to further master our world.
The reason the history of humanity and civilization needed to be talked about in this analysis of the exponential future, is to set up the time frames in which humans have traditionally needed to adapt to change.
Exponential Explosion
The exponential explosion is a period in which technology, as well as the world, changes much faster than anyone can track and manage. We are reaching a point of verticality, where an exponential curve becomes almost vertical. This is called a J-curve or “hockey stick” curve. When this happens, and arguably now, it is almost impossible for us to recognize the significance of the changes because we have no frame of reference, we are not used to the speed because the curve in the past wasn’t as steep.
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” — Albert Bartlett (physics at the University of Colorado)
As curve steepens much faster than before, we will be less able to adapt to it. Think back to our travel throughout the history of change from earlier. For a majority of the past 3.4 million years, our rate of change has been largely flat, taking tens or thousands of generations to make significant jumps (in comparison to now). Our biological evolution takes thousands of years to have a meaningful impact. We can adapt to our environment, but are we built for the coming rate of change? Have our brains changed that much since society was much more simpler? These are things I will explore in a later article, but for now, let’s focus on the phenomenon itself.
Technology’s Example
Growing up around technology and working in the fields of software engineering, design, and artificial intelligence has equipped me, in some way, for the exponential explosion. A software engineer has to constantly learn new frameworks and programming languages to keep up with new capabilities. Designers have to quickly adapt to new human-computer interactions and the increased power available to products. Those working with artificial intelligence recognize and appreciate the inevitability of self-improving models. There are so many aspects of technology that we could focus on, but I will try to keep the narrative concise with a few examples.
Another aspect of this increase in the rate of change is the next generation of internet and cellular infrastructure. If you look at the last decade and what cloud infrastructure and virtualization has provided, it has enabled a new era of technological improvement and innovation. Before AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, and others, businesses had to install and manage their infrastructure. Startups needed much more capital to build out their ideas. Now, for next to nothing, one can stand up a set of servers in the cloud and utilize world-class infrastructure. It has enabled a steeper growth curve.
When you look at the next generation of cellular infrastructure by the likes of Ericsson, Qualcomm, Nokia, and Huawei, you notice that it is being designed to be modular, virtualized, and upgradable. This will enable new cellular technology to iterate much more quickly. When new advancements in this infrastructure appear, it will be much simpler and cheaper to upgrade. Enabling new economies to form and industries to grow. One of those industries is the IoT (Internet of Things) future, which will be booming by 2025 with over 25 billion connected devices.
Let’s think back twenty years, the world was just learning about the internet and all of its economic potential. We were a bit too naive and the dot-com bubble exploded in the late 90s, but it was a temporary blip on the exponential growth curve. The internet changed the world in many ways, connecting half of the world’s population by 2017 and creating entire new sectors of the economy. The smartphone did something similar, creating new markets, app stores, and connectivity. Over 5 billion people have mobile devices, with 60% of those devices being smartphones. In the late 90s, it was hard to see the path ahead. What would the internet become, how would it change the world? We are at a similar precipice now. The only difference is that we are on a steeper part of the curve.
I’ve raised several questions throughout this introduction that I will try to answer in the next parts of this series. For now, I just leave you with this — do you think you are ready for super-exponential change?
