Entering an Exponential Revolution Age & Thinking Exponentially
The potential impact on life - Going from an informational to an exponential age.

5Deka’s Special Edition: Celebrating the first year anniversary of 5Deka Inc.

Written by: Réjean Bourgault (Canada); Edited by Olivier Adam (United Kingdom)
Co-founders of 5Deka Inc. – December 2009 – All Rights Reserved
Special thanks to David Lazar for corrections and editing.


Abstract


We are now entering a new era of profound change, one at an exponential growth rate called the Exponential Revolution. This revolution will create unprecedented changes, technological breakthroughs and discoveries in many facets of science that will change our personal lives even more than any other previous technological advancement. Over the next 50 years, the medical and healthcare sectors will see previously unimaginable, unthinkable and unbelievable scientific breakthroughs that will yield truly amazing discoveries.

The exponential increase in computing performance and miniaturization efforts, often related to nanotechnology, will be the foundation of many fundamental research discoveries during this upcoming Exponential Revolution. We foresee in the next 50 years, based on this solid foundation described above, rapid changes in key research development areas and applications related to Genomics (DNA Research), Neuroscience (Brain Research), Biotechnology (Stem Cells Research), Bionic, Robotics and Space discoveries.

So let’s try to demystify what is up and coming in this future and why thinking exponentially is very important when trying to understand the next 50 years of our lives and beyond.




Caution / Warning: this article is more futuristic than previous ones we have written and you may find some aspects of this discourse scary, especially with respects to the potential impact it could have on humanity as we know it today. It has the potential to shake some of our personal beliefs and values. So please keep in mind this is an article about the potential of the future, not necessarily the future as it will happen.




First: Let’s look at the differences between Linear and Exponential growth. The following table illustrates, for example, the growth of computer performance over a 10 years period.

Years 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Linear Growth 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Exponential Growth 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024

Using the table above, assuming a linear growth in its development, a computer in 2005 would have been 5 times faster than it was in 2001. However, when we consider exponential growth for that very same computer, it becomes 32 times more powerful than one similarly produced and priced five years prior.

Continuing with this line of thinking, here are some more examples that show the difference between linear and exponential growth.

Examples of linear growth:
- A height growth chart for children ages 2 to 16 follows a linear growth curve.
- The track record for the 100 meter sprint follows a linear performance improvement curve. In fact, very little improvement year over year (from 10.6 seconds in 1912, to 10.06 seconds in 1964 to the recent record of 9.58 seconds set in August 2009).

Examples of exponential growth:
- The number of pixels per dollar for digital cameras.
- A virus, like SARS for example, will typically spread exponentially at the beginning.
- Human population growth here on earth. From year 0 AD to year 2000 AD, the world’s population has definitely followed an exponential growth path. However, based on UN projections, the world’s population will grow from 6.8 billion in 2009 to 9 billion in 2050, in other words, a more linear growth rate. This is due to many factors including changes in access to and methods of birth control as well as societal changes in acceptability of using them.
- Computer storage capacity (i.e. memory stick and hard drives). (PS: Even though growth over the past 30 years has been tremendous, it only becomes exponential when we factor in the improvement of speed. Without speed, it can’t be considered as exponential.)

We, humans, understand linear growth and linear thinking very well. If I tell you that your computer will be 10 times faster in 10 years, you might say “wow”; it’s going to be fast. In this case, however, “10 times faster” is actually a very small improvement when compared to exponential growth in that if we were to calculate it in terms of exponential growth, that same computer would be 1024 times faster for that same 10 year period!



Now, consider Moore’s Law as defined in 1975 which, according to Wikipedia, “describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware, in which the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.” The law itself, without going in details, still holds true today (although some now argue that the law will reach its theoretical limit in terms of transistor growth density once it reaches the atomic level - nevertheless, let’s assume that the law still holds true for now and will do so for a while longer). Since then, Moore’s Law has been updated to mention “performance is doubling every 18 months” instead of density doubling every 2 years as originally asserted.

Moore’s Law has been proven to hold true on many different occasions during the exponential growth of computing performance, going from electromechanical, relays, to vacuum tubes, single transistors and integrated circuits onto complex multilayer microprocessors. As multiple studies have demonstrated, computing performances has doubled every 18 months on average over the past few decades. Thus, for purposes of this article, as we are more interested in the increase in performance than the increase in density of the processors, we will therefore entertain the idea of doubling processing performance every 18 months (a cycle).


What will Exponential Computer Performance concretely mean for the next 50 years?

It means that if Moore’s Law holds true and computing performance continues to increase at this pace, 45 years from now, the performance of your home computer will be 1 billion or 1,000,000,000 times faster!!! (Calculated using 30 cycles of exponential growth, each cycle being 18 months in length)

We can also apply this hypothesis to the increase in storage performance (capacity and speed) that you will have on your home computer when compared to today. By combining the increase in processing power and storage space at an exponential growth, you will have the equivalent of a very large data center at home in less than 45 years and at the price of what a computer costs today - about $1,000.

Still doubtful this could happen? A few days before publishing this article, Intel released the news that they were able to create a microprocessor containing 48 cores. Simply put, imagine the power of 48 computers on a single chip (it gets slightly more complex, but for illustration purpose, this is a valid approximation). Intel doesn’t plan on stopping there either, as they aim to put 100+ cores on a single chip. This is the Exponential Revolution.



Let’s look at some concrete examples of what this all means in our lives through the profound changes that will come from the DNA and brain research.

We’ve already seen the significant impact that exponential growth in computer performance has had in the domain of Genetic Engineering or Genomics (DNA research). Take, for example, the Human Genome Project: Starting in 1990, this $3 billion USD project, involving participants from multiple countries, had a stated goal of decoding the entire DNA chain / sequence within 15 years. Many experts were at first quite sceptical about the chances of achieving that goal; especially after the first year during which progress was very small. However, since computer processing performance kept increasing at exponential growth over the duration of the project, it only took 13 years to complete (10 years if you only count how long it took to achieve the first draft - see note 1), in other words, two years ahead of schedule.

An interesting article appeared in Fortune Magazine on September 1st 2008 (page 46), arguing that with today’s computers able to perform calculations much faster, a research laboratory can sequence (decode) the entire DNA of anyone in approximately six weeks at a price tag ranging from $100,000 to $300,000. The article takes note of a California based start-up company called Pacific Biosciences that has set a goal of offering a commercially / publically available DNA scan costing only $1,000 that could be completed in 15 minutes by 2013. Although one could argue that this aggressive goal may not be attainable by 2013, it is nevertheless a clear example of an Exponential Revolution in research. It will happen sooner than later.

The eventual and publically available decoding of the DNA sequence at an affordable price combined with sophisticated computer analysis using much faster computer performance than we have today will bring tons of new data that will definitely help researchers around the globe to find cures for viruses, cancers and other health and mental disorders.

An amazing discovery on April 28th 2009 was made possible, thanks to this now more affordable and faster DNA scanning. The results of the world’s largest DNA scan on autism uncovered a new gene variant for the disorder. Here is an abstract from the UCLA’s Center for Autism Treatment and Research press release: “UCLA scientists, in
partnership with 30 research institutions across the nation, have identified a new gene variant that is highly common in autistic children. And when researchers scrutinized the activity of the gene, known as CDH10, in the brain, they discovered that it is most active in key regions that support language, speech and interpreting social behaviour. Using the largest population sample to date”, the press release goes on to say, “Scientists systematically scanned the DNA of 3,100 individuals from 780 families nationwide. Each family had at least two autistic children. While the gene variant is common in the general population, we discovered that it occurs about 20% percent more often in children with autism” said study author Dr. Daniel Geschwind, director of the UCLA Center for Autism Treatment and Research. “A major change like this in the genetic code is too common to be a simple mutation – it is a risk factor in the origin of the disease”.




Please take a deep breathe now… Read those words again slowly: Autism, Large population DNA scan, 20% and Risk factor. Think about the consequence of this discovery and many others to surely come in medicine involving DNA research.

The consequences of available and affordable DNA scanning will unfortunately also bring to bear some previously unknown concerns in our society. For example, assume that it is year 2020 and complete DNA scanning only costs $500. You know that chromosome 5 and gene CDH10 with a variant could have 20% risk of autism. What would you do if the scan of your unborn baby shows this gene variant? What if you and your spouse are scanned prior to conception and a genetic doctor tells you that based on the results; there would be a 20% risk of having a child who is autistic?

When you ask this question to children of the Cyber Generation (15 years old and less) their answer is often the same: “I would not take such a chance!” You therefore have the following options: donor with in-vitro fertilization, adoption, having no children at all or, as a cyber generation kid once told me, “You scan the baby inside the mother to verify their DNA before giving birth”.

Assume that you decide to take the in-vitro route with a donor because you and your spouse want to minimize risk. We may end up creating a new market that would search for “pure” donors and, consequently, breaking the family genealogical tree. I will stop there, but I am sure you understand the consequences of what we’ve just described.

DNA manipulation can also bring an interesting aspect to the discussion. A group of researchers recently manipulated the DNA gene of a mouse (basically by disabling a single gene that produces a protein) that is involved in regulating the body’s metabolism, which had the effect of increasing the mouse’s longevity by 20% compared with that of the control group. If we were to extrapolate this to humans, this could mean living 16 more years on average. We are not suggesting, by any means, that this is something worth pursuing; we rather want to inform you that this is already happening today in research labs and research on the subject is going to get more importance in the coming years.

Keep in mind that DNA scanning and genetic manipulation could be used in a very positive way in helping to understand the causes of and find a cure for many diseases; either pro-actively or after the discovery of said diseases.

Many large scale DNA studies conducted around the world are happening as we speak. On November 25th 2009 in Hong Kong, Reuters reported, the results of 8,200 DNA scans led by Liu Jianjun, head of the human genetics group at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore on inhabitants from southern and northern China (to identify potential genetic differences between the two groups). The same news described how Dr. Liu discovered three genetic variants between 1,000 psoriasis patients and 1,000 non-patients.




Nanotechnology

The same principle from Moore’s Law will also likely be applied in device miniaturization. Imagine a robot 1 billion times smaller in 45 years. Take Asimo, the robot from Honda which today measures 1.2 meters. Applying Moore’s Law would mean a robot like Asimo would be a billionth of 1.2 meter in size or, simply put, have a height of 1.2 nanometres (1.2 nm). A robot with a height of 1.2 nanometres would easily float in your blood stream (a nano robot of 1.2 nanometre is much smaller than the size of a red globule - a blood cell equals 7 micrometers). This concept is best described in the literature as Bionanoscience and Nanorobotics. These nanorobots are also called molecular machines or nanobots. All of these terms fall under the nanotechnology umbrella.

What’s next? DNA research, as previously mentioned, would identify the problematic gene. The nanobots would then be used to ‘cure’ the disease. For example, to cure a patient with cancer we could potentially send thousands of nanobots into your blood stream with the purpose of destroying or repairing cancerous cells.



Brain Research

Asides from DNA study and nanotechnology, the other large area of focus for the next 50 years will be on brain research (neuroscience) - how the brain and memory work, its connections, how neurons and synapses work, impact on blood movement, how we compute information, how to read and decode it. Questions like: - How can we simulate and produce computer in the future that are acting like the human brain with performance, low power requirement and very low heating dissipation.

We already began to hear terms like Brain Computer Interface (BCI) for video game applications, Brain Emotion Reader, B2B (for Brain to Brain Communication), Brain Dream Recording research (ex: Japan), Brain Scan are now common, and so on.

The brain is a super and very complex computer. According to Dr. Raymond Kurtzweill, a well known futurist, by year 2023 for $1000 we should have on the market a computer with performance equivalent as to a human brain (in terms of millions of instructions per second capability). He also predicts, that if Moore’s law holds true, by year 2050, a 1000$ computer could have the performance of all human brains on earth.

A few days prior to releasing this article, I was with some people from IBM and we were talking about the topic of this article. If you go on IBM’s web site and browse for “Brain Research”, you will find amazing fundamental research on brains that IBM is presently doing (ps.: many other firms and scientists around the world are also doing fundamental research in that domain). Here is an abstract of an article that comes directly from IBM’s web site, referring to Cognitive Computing Research, that should catch your attention: “Modeling the mammalian brain: Under the auspices of an initiative called "Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and Supercomputing," a computing team at the Almaden Lab aims to create a universal computing platform based on the high-level computational principles of the brain. Ultimately, the team hopes to rival the brain’s low power consumption and small size by using nanoscale devices for synapses and neurons.”



Stem Cells Research

We will not, in this article, go in details about stem cell research; however, we believe this will be another area of rapid changes thanks to the increase of computing performance.

On March 9th, 2009, President Obama authorized public funding for stem cell research. Here is an abstract from the President’s web site:
“Today, with the Executive Order I am about to sign, we will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers; doctors and innovators; patients and loved ones have hoped for, and fought for, these past eight years: we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research. We will vigorously support scientists who pursue this research. And we will aim for America to lead the world in the discoveries it one day may yield.
... In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research – and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.”


The long term future and potential consequences for humanity

We believe that between 50 and 500 years from now, we will have discovered exactly how memory works in the human brain; how the information is stored and how it can be retrieved – all of this being a bit scary due to potential consequence as you can imagine. I would also like to add that being able to upload information to the brain has been a fantasy of humans for decades – starting with Joe 90, a television series that aired in 1968 when I was little, where Joe wanted to learn a language and use a supercomputer, to some recent examples like the Matrix movies, originally released in 1999, where Trinity uploads to her brain the details on how to pilot a helicopter.

This concept of potentially uploading information to the brain in the future led to a very interesting comment recently made to me by a young and brilliant 15 year-old student. After a keynote speech to a large group of 400 high school students in February 2009, the student came to me and said:
- I am not sure I want this.
- What do you mean?
- I am not sure that I want to one day see this capability of uploading information to the brain by, let’s say, downloading the German language in my brain without any effort.
- Why?
- Because I want to be unique!

On the spot, I didn’t have the right answer. The phrase, “I want to be unique”, bounced in my head for days, nights and even for weeks following that comment.

I then organized a visit to the Montreal Neurological Institute where I was introduced to a 30-year veteran and experienced researcher on the subject of the human brain. The whole purpose of the discussion was: “Do you think it will be possible to upload information to a human brain by 2050?” That’s it, that’s all I wanted to know.

We then spent over an hour discussing the subject and came to the conclusion that it will be very unlikely by 2050 (unless… exponential rate…). For the past 30 years, increased knowledge of the human brain on a worldwide basis has been very limited. We still don’t understand exactly how, where and in what form information is stored in the brain. For instance, how come you remember the smell of a flower that you first smelled when you were 5 at the age of 40?

I then changed the course of the conversation and said: “Forget 2050. Assume one day this would be possible. Should my student still be worried about his uniqueness, his individuality? After all, how do we define how we are unique?” Although the latter part of my questioning is somewhat philosophical, it also contains a scientific explanation. On the philosophical side, we could argue that our uniqueness is due to our origin, our education, our environment and our values. From a scientific view, when you look at identical twins, they are at first “identical by definition”, but, and as everyone would agree, they are still very different, in other words, unique. Even if their “Program” is identical at the beginning they are nevertheless each unique. On that note, someone could argue, that even if we were to upload the same information in different brains (example how to speak a foreign language), each individual would still act differently and be unique. It is what you will do with the information that will make you unique. Einstein was saying: the Intelligence is not the ability to store the information but to know where to find it. (I would add to find it and use it properly)

There is however a dangerous side to the equation in that if you could upload information to someone’s brain, you should also be able to download information from the brain and transfer it to a computer and analyse its data. I’m not sure if we want this though. Big brother is watching.

The last ten minutes of my interview with this “brain research doctor” revolved around the possibility of relying on nanobots by 2050 as described earlier in this article. After pausing for at least ten seconds, he responded: “Yes, it’s absolutely possible that we could envision nanobots or, what we call molecular machines, available in 2050+. The science community understands the main key principles of what we need to do to develop it further; it is more a challenge of pure miniaturization than anything else”.



Conclusion

The bottom line is that we are definitely entering into an Exponential Revolution; where many things, unthinkable 20 years ago or even today, will be possible 25 or 50 years from now, due to exponential growth in computer processing performance and miniaturization efforts.

Yet, if we continue down this path, won’t we be going against natural selection of the human species? The answer is Yes and No. Yes, in the sense that today no one can argue that we are in fact eliminating some risks of disease and potential infirmity in a pre-selective mode - we are therefore using technology to protect the human race against natural selection.

No, because we are already doing many things in science and medicine which have been fighting against natural selection. As the result of technological advancement in bionics and new materials, an Olympic athlete now can run faster without legs, than the fastest sprinter in the world (who uses his two “human” legs). In today’s bionics, we already use / rely on multiple embedded devices to extend human life. Think of a pacemaker for patients with cardiac problems. Natural selection and bionics are two topics that we will discuss in further detail in future articles.

Since we know there is a possibility for wrongdoing with these technologies, why do we keep researching them? Is it just our inherent curiosity or is it something else? We can’t stop advancing science on the premise that it may one day go wrong (what if there is a decent probability it would turn into a positive outcome). Once we reach that point in the future, regulation and politics will need to be put in place to avoid technology misuse and abuse (i.e. nuclear use today). In the meantime however, the nature of modern society pushes us in wanting a better understanding of everything around us; why do some people close to us have cancer, Alzheimer, leukemia or are paralyzed or have autism? We want to find a cure for those poor kids and people afflicted with these and other terrible health problems.

By the way… for those of you in the IS-IT and Telecom industry, I hope that by reading this article you no longer argue for the need of having high speed broadband connectivity. (Examples: houses connected through a fibre optic network, high speed wireless access and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity)


Are you ready for the Future!


Philosophical debate

Is the Exponential age, a Revolution or an Evolution? Some would argue, like one of my customers did the other day, that the Exponential age is simply an evolution of the Information Revolution. That same person characterized almost all new technologies and upcoming breakthroughs as a natural evolution of the previous revolution. Therefore, in the future, what would be the next Revolution? His interesting response was that proof of extra-terrestrial life could be one of those future revolutions. This is one way to look at it, and certainly some would love to see this event happen. Case in point, in “Deception point”, a scientific thriller novel book by Dan Brown; the whole story revolves around this.

The next Revolution: discovery of the “extra-terrestrial” life.

Let’s talk about it in a serious manner. The front page of National Geographic’s December 2009 issue (title: Are We Alone) shows a new Exoplanet discovered the previous April called Gliese 581e, with a mass close to that of the earth (1.9 times to be precise). Wikipedia’s definition of an Exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet beyond our solar system, orbiting a star other than our Sun.

This new Exoplanet, also described in “Sciences et Avenir” magazine in May 2009, is located 20.3 light years away from Earth. Scientists have so far found about 400 Exoplanets in the Universe. The particularity of Gliese 581e, d, c and b (four sisters exoplanets discovered between 2005 and 2009) is that they are presumably within the habitable zone of its star, in other words, being not too far (not too cold) from and not too close (not too hot) to its star. As a result, one of them could perhaps support water and life.

National Geographic neatly sums up the concept of Exponential Growth in 2 sentences: “We believe that Billions of such planets must exist and that they hold the promise of expanding not only the scope of human knowledge but also the richness of the human imagination”.

“It took humans thousands of years to explore our own planet and centuries to comprehend our neighbouring planets, but nowadays new worlds are being discovered every week.” (Source: National Geographic, December 2009, New Earths, Page 91 and 92)

In late November, I was presenting to a large group of Engineers where I met an interesting member of the Canadian Space Agency, basically the “NASA” of Canada. We ended up talking, by pure coincidence I might add, of the discovery of that exoplanet and THE next revolution. He encouraged me to visit NASA’s website and look for their official mission statement which is: To explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers as only NASA can.


Are you ready for the Future!

Further futurist view and notes

Some futurists like Dr. Raymond Kurtzweill talk about a point where Moore’s Law will bring us to technological singularity, where, by definition, the computer will have by far surpassed human intelligence and will start to give back to the human race its discovery knowledge. At that stage, computers will basically learn by themselves at an amazing rate. (Wikipedia’s definition of technological singularity is “a term used with varying meanings related to self-improving artificial intelligence, super-intelligence, breakdowns in the predictability of the future and accelerating change”.)

Another example of exponential growth (without being officially measured) is mobile devices. Look at the first portable cell phone in 1990 - roughly the size of a shoe box and, then compare its size and power to a cell phone in 2009. Continue at this pace, and you’ll have a mobile phone integrated in a circuit chip the size of a grain of rice; which will be directly embedded in your body at the back of your ear by 2020. So no more large Bluetooth devices that give you a Star Trek look will be required, especially for those who keep them at your son’s hockey game or during a cocktail reception.

For those interested, based on the exponential growth, we would technically have computers that are one googol times faster in 500 years assuming that Moore’s Law will hold true for that long. We simply can’t imagine what this would imply for humanity and the way in which we would live our everyday lives (note: 1 googol = 10 power 100 or 10 exponential 100).

Reference points:
- Industrial Revolution: 1800 to 1900 (with railroad and mass production)
- Information Revolution: 1950’s
- Computer Revolution: 1990’s
- Exponential Revolution: Now
- Extra-Terrestrial Revolution: Future

Note 1: The DNA is made up of long sequences of building blocks, sort of like sentences composed from a four-letter alphabet: A, C, G and T. The human genome contains about 3 billion letters. In the human DNA, there are about 20,000 to 25,000 genes. The Sequencing activity of the DNA in the Human Genome Project cost a portion of the $3 billion over 13 years; the whole project included a wide range of scientific activities related to genomics.
Source: Human Genome Project web site.

An interesting futurist movie is called GATTACA and shows how your resume in the future could simply be a sample of your blood or your saliva.



Extra… For the fun

Evolution of world mapping system (like Google maps) - Prediction. Here is one more example of the need for exponential growth in mass storage and real time processing performance. Nowadays, Google has roughly mapped the whole world with their “Google Maps” service (there are a few companies that actually offer this type of service). You can view any specific place in the world and zoom in at a decent level. They have recently added Street View which gives you a 360 degree view, in other words, like being in the center of many streets in cities around the world. The pictures are static as they were taken at a given point in time. My street “picture” for example was taken back in April 2009. According to our estimates, this entire library of “static pictures” for Google Maps, takes approximately 1.29 Petabytes (1.29 * 10^15 Bytes) of information (quite a few estimates for resolution, compression and coverage were made, but this is mainly to show the exponential growth impact).

Now, imagine if Google decided to launch GEL (for Google Earth Live), a name given for real time video monitoring service of the entire planet. The amount of data in one full day, at 24 images per second to obtain a “fluid” video, would take approximately 8.1 * 10^23 Bytes (we’ve assumed the resolution would be greatly improved and tracking an individual at that level would be more than possible). This means that if Google was to launch a service like that, and if it followed Moore’s Law curve, that service could be launched in about 45 years from now if we consider performance and storage needs.

When Google launched Google Street View in autumn 2009 in our city, (the project has been running since 2007) we had a great debate about it at the office. In fact, it became a hot topic all over town. Some thought that it was amazing while others saw it as very intrusive of their privacy. When discussing this with students from the Cyber Generation (15 years old and less), you get a completely different view; they love it. “Imagine, a kid that gets kidnapped would be traceable anywhere in the world.”


The Future is already here!
Are you ready for the Future!


Disclaimer: many dates are pure projections, and many factors could drastically change these futurist views. This article is not either a reference document nor should be used in that way for research. This article is only a futurist view and shouldn’t be used as the basis of how the future will shape up.

We welcome your comments.