Saturday, July 16, 2011

Change Throughout Generations

I've thought recently about change and how age and generation can affect how one perceives change. Why do people in the older generations tend to resist change more than the younger generations? Sure the answer may just be that kids are growing and learning and therefore more adept at change, but I think it runs a little deeper.

I think it has to do, in part, with Moore's Law and the fact that technology in general is improving exponentially. Moore's Law basically states that computer processors will double in capacity (speed) roughly once every 2 years. This is exponential growth, which means that the rate at which it increases in constantly increasing.

Let me put this into context for you because as humans we often have a difficult time imagining exponential growth. If you take a theoretical piece of paper and fold it over on itself 50 times (which means the thickness of the paper doubles every time you fold it) how thick would the paper be? 100ft? 1 mile? 100 miles?

Answer: The average piece of printer paper, #20 weight, is 0.0038 inches (or 0.097mm). That means that 0.0038 x (2^50) = 4,278,419,646,002 inches or