Speaking before at the Jones Seminar on Friday, February 25, Thayer professor Ronald Lasky addressed the question of whether advances in electronic technology were evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary, in nature.
Lasky began his presentation by detailing recent advances in several popular consumer gadgets. Examining computers, portable music devices, and video display players, Lasky conceded that advances in such devices over the past years have been largely evolutionary in nature: improvements to earlier devices often led to innovations in proceeding ones.
Offering a faux conclusion in which he conceded that improved electronic technology was entirely evolutionary in nature, Lasky then proceeded to qualify such an inference. According to Lasky, while advances in individual devices, such as computers or televisions, may be largely evolutionary, the manner by which modern society interweaves and interconnects the use of such devices is truly revolutionary. And this revolution, according to Lasky, is the product of three distinct innovations: improved computational speed, cheaper memory, and the introduction of internet connectivity.
To demonstrate improved computational speed, Lasky cited Moore’s Law, a principle articulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore which states, “The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every twenty-four months” (1). Graphing historical data for transistor concentration, Lasky showed that these numbers have, in fact, closely followed Moore’s predictions. Lasky also noted that the price of computations has fallen. According to Lasky, the dollar cost per Million Instructions per Second, a unit of measure for processing speed (2), has dropped from over $5000 in 1985 to approximately one-tenth of a cent in 2011.
Lasky also cited the introduction of cheaper memory, noting that the cost of solid-state memory, e.g. flash drives, has decreased from approximately $1 million per megabyte in 1970 to $0.07 per megabyte in 2011. Because the amount of memory required for standard media types like books, songs, and movies is relatively constant, falling prices allows users tremendous potential for information sharing and storage.
Focusing on internet connectivity for his final point, Lasky noted that while the internet has allowed for a revolutionary exchange of knowledge in the immediate past, its capabilities are actually regressing. According to Lasky, the greater capabilities and rapid proliferation of devices like the iPhone are putting tremendous strain on bandwidth and are slowing down the internet.
Concluding his presentation, Lasky focused on recent news and happenings in technology, deliberating on “Watson,” a computer which crushed former Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a televised match up this month (3), and a Time article proclaiming that artificial intelligence will equal human intelligence by 2045. Addressing both issues, Lasky conceded that, while computers may certainly eclipse humans in quantifiable intelligence, their inability to truly be human will always limit their capabilities.