2. Accelerating Progress
2.3 Progress and Humanity
We have seen in these graphs that progress not only continues to advance, but that it grows exponentially, meaning the pace of change is constantly accelerating.
Will this really persist as long as significant technological progress remains possible? As we saw at the beginning of this chapter: exponential functions are dangerous. As long as they encounter no limits, their values quickly reach numbers that surpass human imagination. And if we cannot even comprehend the pace of progress, how are we, as humans, supposed to keep up with our own advances?
In the Middle Ages, when the progress curve was flatter and technology improved only imperceptibly within a human lifetime, this was not an issue. Today, however, the pace of progress already overwhelms many, especially older individuals. They master the technologies that were new in their youth: microwaves, batteries, and calculators. But newer inventions, such as computers, smartphones, and DVD players, are already too complicated for them. Not to mention innovations currently transforming the world, like AI*, blockchain*, or 3D printing.
So one might assume that this will become a significant brake on progress in the future: the pace at which humans can understand and adapt to new technologies.
But will the pace of progress truly be limited and remain constrained by this? What drives the pace of progress so strongly in the first place?
If we understand these forces, we can also speculate on whether and how the pace might continue to increase, even though humans struggle to keep up with it.
Progress is driven by competition, by the advantage of having better tools than one’s rivals. And competition is something that arises automatically with life. Evolution is the survival of the fittest organisms. The same competition exists between human societies, states, religions, companies. A society or group that achieves faster progress—and thus better tools—prevails. Because it can produce more resources, because it has superior weapons, because its communication and organization are more effective. This is why the countries where the Enlightenment took hold and from which the scientific revolution emerged have been so successful.
One example of the success of scientifically advanced countries is the Opium War between Britain and the Chinese Empire (1839–1842). Britain had far fewer armed men than China but possessed vastly superior military equipment. This allowed it to impose a peace on its terms and take control of China’s foreign trade (to sell opium...).
So if individual groups or societies find ways to cope with a faster pace of progress, they gain an advantage that allows them to pull ahead of others. And once this effect becomes apparent, there are strong incentives for other groups to do the same, to avoid falling behind.
What ways could groups find?
Better and lifelong education is an obvious point that many countries already prioritize today.
The use of technology can be made as simple as possible. A concept that Apple, for example, maintains as a core part of its brand strategy. The next level is “invisible technology”, such as sensors embedded in clothing. So long as you don’t know about it, you don’t even notice the technology. Consequently, you don’t need to learn how to use it.
A different way of thinking could be very helpful. Because ever-faster changes are an enormous stress factor for humans. Stress leads to quicker and more instinctive actions (driven by adrenaline). But instincts don’t help in acquiring new knowledge or adapting one’s worldview. They would be more useful for defending against attacking predators. In a world changing ever faster, a different attitude towards new things leads to a better life.10
And then there is everything that enhances people's mental abilities and thereby allows them to grasp technology more quickly. So-called “brain augments”. The most prosaic example of this is the smartphone.
With a book, you have to spend time locating the information you look for inside of it (and find the right book beforehand...). With a desktop computer, you have to sit down at it and boot it up, before you can start a web search. With a smartphone on the other hand, you simply pull it out of your pocket, activate the screen, and can get started. If you want to know a fact, no matter when or where, you can get an answer within seconds.
There are experiments that show people could no longer remember that they had just looked up information on their smartphone. The process of looking up knowledge was fast and seamless enough that it was no longer remembered as a separate action.
It is already quite foreseeable that there will be further significant advancements in how quickly and smoothly such questions can be asked and how good the quality of the answers will be.
The way we ask questions will evolve from search terms to voice recognition with context awareness, and eventually to simply thinking the questions to the computer—via a device that can read the brain's activity patterns and has been trained on the specific brain.[12] This will significantly increase the input speed toward the computer.
On the output side, the ongoing miniaturization of chips, batteries, and other electronic components will lead to glasses taking over the role of smartphones in a few years. These glasses will project images onto the lenses or directly onto the eyes. With audio output (in-ear headphones or sound transmission through the skull bones), a microphone, and cameras that film the surroundings and, for example, recognize hands to make them usable for input as well. Outputs will not only be projected onto a virtual screen, but will also be meaningfully blended with what is visible in the real environment. For example, a virtually projected game onto a real table (Augmented Reality, AR* for short).
And questions will no longer simply be asked of a search engine either. Instead, there will be a new type of software for this: personalized virtual assistants. Artificial intelligences, or AIs for short. They will receive a lot of the data that the glasses collect about the user's surroundings. With this data, and the knowledge they have about their user (previously asked questions, personality, hobbies, ...), they will be very good at answering questions in the right context, anticipating needs, and delivering answers in the most useful and fastest form. Here, AIs are making rapid progress year after year.11[13], [14]
Here is an example of how these capabilities could work together to help a person grasp new things more quickly.
Someone is standing in front of a technical device they don’t know how to operate. In the past, they would have read the instruction manual. Today, they can watch a YouTube video on their smartphone that demonstrates how to use it.
In the sketched future, they will ask their AI assistant in their AR glasses. This assistant sees the device, can predict what the user actually wants to achieve, displays the instructions directly on the device, can guide step by step while the user performs the necessary actions, and can intervene to correct if the user misunderstands an instruction (the AI sees what the user is doing). Overall, this process will be so seamless that the user will no longer remember afterwards that they couldn’t operate the device before and needed assistance to learn how to use it.
So, all in all, I assume people will find ways—the ones just described, but certainly others as well—to keep up with even much faster progress.
Technological progress shapes the world we live in. And the question of the limiting factor is still open. Let us therefore try to follow the coming development and its constant acceleration a little further still.