The other day I explained why society doesn’t always
absorb new technologies as fast as early advocates often
believe will happen. As with almost every issue, there is another
side to the story and I’d now like to argue why emerging
technologies will be adopted at an ever accelerating rate.
Ray Kurzweil addressed this issue in his outstanding book,
The Singularity is Near, when
he noted that the rate of “paradigm shift” is doubling every
decade. As a historical analogy, he noted that it took 35 years
before 25% of the population adopted the telephone. The radio took
about 31 years; the television 26 years; the personal computer 16
years; the mobile phone 12 years; and the World Wide Web only 10
years.
Since then Google, Wikipedia and a number of other social
networking applications have been adopted in an even shorter amount
of time. This acceleration, however, has not been limited to only
communication-related devices. Robotics are being adopted at an
accelerating rate. In 2005, only 1% of all prostatectomies were
performed by robots. Today, over 50% of all such operations are
performed using a da Vinci surgical robot.
The fields of rapid prototype manufacturing and systems biology
are also experiencing acceleration. To this end, I encourage you to
watch the short two-minute video on the fab@home project (an open
source rapid prototype manufacturing platform) as well as read this
excellent interview with biotechnology
guru and system biology advocate LeRoy Hood.
(cont.)
What I find interesting about the Fab@home project and Hood’s
project is that they both are open-source initiatives. And of all
the things that are enabling the accelerating adoption of
technology – and there many: better tools, faster computers; new
materials, improved bandwidth, etc. – the open source movement is
the most powerful of them all. This is because brilliant and
innovative minds from all over the world are now being given direct
access to the information and the technology necessary to improve
products.
This access, in turn, yields better and more information and
technology. Essentially a “virtuous cycle” is created and it
amounts to a process whereby evolutionary design is speeded up.
And, in order to survive in this new environment, people must
adopt these new technologies at an accelerating rate. To paraphrase
Charles Darwin, it is not the strongest or the fastest that survive
– it is those who can change and adapt the quickest. Therefore, I
would argue, the accelerating adoption of new technology is nothing
more than the manifestion of that most human of instincts:
survival.
