sigmoidia

Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com)
Mon, 6 Oct 1997 18:52:16 -0700 (PDT)

: Hal Finney wrote:
: > It's our old friend, the S curve. Right now the growth in performance
: > looks exponential, just as the increase in sewing machine speeds (or
: > virtually any other industrial performance measure) looked exponential
: > at one time. But they hit a limit back then, and we will probably hit
: > a limit ourselves now.

Brian Atkins writes
: I'm relatively new to the list, but my understanding of an "S curve"
: is that is for a particular technology- like aluminum+silicon
: chips like a Pentium. Obviously each technology reaches a limit,
: and something new like copper steps in. The question is can we
: keep finding newer and more powerful technologies, right?

Well we can't do it forever, because there are inherent
physical limits to computation (energy, temperature, quanta,
stuff like that).

Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher@netcom.com