• A recent iPhone, right, has thousands of times more computing power than an Osborne Executive

    A recent iPhone, right, has thousands of times more computing power than an Osborne Executive "portable" computer from 1982. Such an improvement is an example of Moore's Law in action.

    Photo: Wikipedia/Casey Fleser

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How to predict the progress of technology


MIT researcher finds Moore’s Law and Wright’s Law best predict how technology improves.

Press Contact

Sarah McDonnell
Email: s_mcd@mit.edu
Phone: 617-253-8923
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Topics: Engineering Systems, Manufacturing, Policy, Technology, Moore's Law, Wright’s Law


Magellan introduced the first Hand Held GPS in 1989 for $3000. It was the size of a brick.In 1997, you could buy the same type of device for $99. Both products were pretty klugy then in comparison to what we can buy today.

The evolution of the this technology has been a staggering story that definitely relates to this study.

Glad I had the chance to see your summary. Makes me smile!

I had an Osborne 1 back in 1982 and it had a whopping 64k of memory! I used SuperCalc (spreadsheet) and Wordstar (word processor).

“Information technologies improve the fastest.”

Computers have made everything an information technology.

It's profound, yo.

-Reno at Anthrobotic.com

Why is there no mention of Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, which helps catalog and consequently predict the exponential growth of information technologies?

Just a few hours before I stumbled on this release, I submitted a reading-course paper that cited a preprint of this very same article (1207.1463 at arXiv). I'd actually searched Google and Google Scholar on Saturday to see if the paper had made it through peer review yet, but I guess they hadn't indexed the PLoS One version yet.

If I were religious or believed in UFO crap, I'd say someone was trying to tell me something.

Moore's law applies to electronics, which drives information, communication, navigation, and other related technologies. But, does it apply to everything? I don't believe that it does.

It always amuses me when some crackpot technology is introduced, and its backers say: "admittedly it's not economical today, but the cost will come down in a few years - we just need subsidies until then".

Apparently they have not been looking at maned space flight to other heavenly bodies

why?? you want to make it faster?
people will be out of jobs, everyone has to think a like a computer to survive, other human talents will be lost, I am in the industry of Technology, but I speak for those non tech people

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