Exponential Thinking
Understanding the concept and applying it (or trying to!)
My name is Evie Mackie and I am an Innovation Engineer in Room Y — the Innovation Hub at the John Lewis Partnership.
When I joined the team, I was set a challenge: To use speculative design to shape my ideas and think exponentially.
To me, this seemed impossible. I couldn’t quite grasp the design and implementation process of technologies not yet available to us. Sci-Fi films and books over the years have used creative genius to display tech of the future in both Utopian and Dystopian settings and naturally we refer to these in our futurist thinking as ‘The Tech of the Future,’ which in turn we attempt to recreate and use in our commercial commodities.
But speculative design is much more than using these examples to shape our ideologies and once we understand the basis behind exponential thinking, our conceptual creations no longer seem ridiculous or impossible.
Ray Kurzweil is the Guru of futurism (in my opinion!) for those who haven’t read much into the topic. His predictions over the years have been so forward thinking and to those dwelling on them when published seemed impossible at the time — But actually, the accuracy in his future predictions is proof that this IS the way the world is moving and we need to embrace and work with it if we want to stand a chance in keeping up.
“My projects have to make sense not for the time I’m looking at, but the world that will exist when I finish,” Kurzweil says. “And that world is a very different place.”
In 1999 Kurzweil wrote in his book ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines’ the following predictions of 2009:
- At least 50% of all transactions are conducted over the internet.
- Telephone communication is mostly wireless.
- Personal worn computers provide monitoring of body functions, automated identity and directions for navigation.
All can be seen today in common use, when before they seemed entirely unrealistic.
I am most interested in Kurzweil’s Future predictions for 2030 onwards which can be found in his book ‘The Singularity is Near’ (2005).
- Mind uploading becomes successful and perfected and humans become software based
- Nanomachines are directly inserted into the brain to control incoming and outgoing signals
- Using brain nanobots, recorded or real-time brain transmissions of a person’s daily life known as “experience beamers” will be available for other people to remotely experience.
Firstly, I am intrigued in the capability of technology, how these technologies will actually work and be turned into commercially viable products.
Secondly alongside that, how on earth will they be tested, monitored and managed. With this comes the principle discussion of ethics, which must be considered with as equal importance to the tech itself. What does this mean for humans and our way of working and how can we ensure we are doing the right thing?
So how exactly does Exponential Thinking work and how can we apply it…
It is based on Moore’s Law, which states that overall processing power for computers doubles every two years. Kurzweil extended this thinking by suggesting the ‘Law of Accelerating Returns’, which applies Moore’s Law to describe a pattern that covers technological change. Essentially, implying that technology follows an exponential thinking curve.
“If you take 30 steps linearly, you get to 30,” Kurzweil says. “If you take 30 steps exponentially, you’re at a billion.”
This was quite difficult for me to picture, so the below visualisations helped articulate the speed of growth we are really talking about.
Tim Urban shows another great analogy of the thinking, understanding and application of exponential growth, looking at the model of intelligence in his Wait But Why post. The intelligence staircase is shown below noting the Ant, Chicken, Ape and Human. I personally think the ape should only be one step below the human, but the real challenge comes with imagining the intelligence, one, or even two steps above human. Although this would only classify as mildly super intelligent, the exponential rate of intelligence growth occurs when the super-intelligent is able to challenge itself, become smarter and therefore understand how to increase its own intelligence.
The implication of this explosive paradigm led to the 2049 prediction of Singularity — the point when Artificial Intelligence surpasses all as the most capable being on the planet. The point when we as humans are incapable of keeping up with any equation or algorithm and can no longer make sense of it. The point when society is overturned. Scary stuff.
We are programmed to think linearly as humans, which results in general progression but at an incredibly slow rate. Backlogs of work have set requirements that need to be met both to time and budget and that required work is scoped out to create business value and sometimes just the MVP. This limits our natural innovative instinct and stops us from taking creative risk.
Somebody mentioned the ‘Flea Experiment’ to me during a discussion we had on this, which turned out to be a pretty good metaphor for behavioural programming. You can watch the video here or read my brief explanation below.
‘A number of fleas were placed in a glass jar. At the start, the fleas jumped out straight away and of course when the lid was placed on, the fleas hit the lid of the jar. After a while when realising there was an obstacle, the fleas adapted their jump so they never hit the lid. When the lid was removed, the fleas no longer jumped out of the jar, but only jumped as high as the limit to which they had adapted.’
Why is this notable? We are the fleas — limited by requirements, ways of working, routine and being told how and what. Even though we are given the freedom to express ourselves and throw exponential ideas on the table, we have adapted and reserved ourselves, placing a barrier over our potential and blocking the eccentric ideas or creations from surfacing — those that one day, could be the norm.
So how can we get out of the jar, think in this exponential way and apply this to our daily idea generation. Working in Room Y has really helped me explore speculative design processes and out of the box thinking. We use rapid prototype experimentation and user based scenarios to explore the extraordinary and not only look at problem cases to create new solutions but also challenge the current status quo and ethical norms.
‘What If’ statements come into play to bring unruly scenarios into the picture. For example ‘What if the human race needed to adapt and live in a world which was 90% underwater” or “What if we could no longer touch things with our hands to interact.” This helps conceptualise a WHOLE different array of things we may never have thought of otherwise and allows us to imagine what we would need to survive in a future world, which could be a very different place.
Not everything has to be technologically focused though. Technology is not always the final solution but more of an enabler and this is where it is critical to recognise the importance of the human element in how we think about the future. A lot of this involves unpicking and challenging everything we have been taught since we were born, which is a challenge in itself. How can we understand cultural norms and realise why we do things the way that we do. Convenience has become essential to daily living, with commercial solutions being based on simplifying the process and way we believe to be the correct one. But perhaps we were wrong. Maybe there was a simpler way which nobody picked up on, and we’ve been developing the wrong route this entire time.
My advice on those wanting to broaden their awareness on this topic is to read. By reading about culture, our world and what already exists, we can begin to understand how far we really are from these breakthroughs (which is not far!). The availability of most things is surprising, but not surprising enough.
Exponential thinking and design should be conditioned by the element of surprise. What would most shock you? What would you never expect to see? Asking someone to imagine the impossible is not an easy thing to do, but Kurzweil did it and so should we.
