49 minutes of terror
Hope had entered the sealed Yankee Stadium and was settling into her seat when something caught her attention. A single drop of water fell in the center of the field….
As the clock ticked, the drop doubled with a silent but inexorable cadence. Every minute, the field was submerged a little more in the water blanket, which was expanding in an exponential growth and generated a spectacle of breathtaking mathematical beauty and terror.
After 45 minutes, a sheet of water covered just over 7% of the stadium. By the 49th minute, the initial vision of a solitary drop had turned into an unstoppable ocean flooding every corner.
The murmur of amazement from the crowd turned to a watery silence in the now totally flooded stadium. Hope and all the spectators had drowned. The stadium became a reminder of the immutable laws of nature, a living lesson on the latent power of the exponential growth that awaits at the heart of technology.
Reading Calum Chace’s passionate book “The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism,” I came to the context of exponential growth. This term is very illustrative of the moment we find ourselves about technology and its unstoppable advance.
Exponential growth
Scientist Roy Amara, formulated an interesting premise related to innovation, Amara’s Law. It suggests that “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short term and underestimate the effect in the long term”. This adage not only encapsulates a fundamental truth about the adoption and impact of technology but also offers a lens through which we can explore our expectations and prepare for the imminent future.
One of Amara’s contemporaries, Arthur C. Clark, also echoed similar questioning, highlighting how bold predictions about technology often come true, not in the initial short time frame postulated, but on a more distant horizon. Clarke articulated that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, alluding to how revolutionary technologies can seem surreal at their core, until they manifest and reshape our reality.
The profound and transformative influence of technology
Exponential growth, a fundamental attribute of technological evolution, is often misunderstood because of our inherent inclination toward linear thinking.
Emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to blockchain, are on a similar trajectory of exponential growth. Although it is difficult to predict the pace and magnitude of their impact accurately, Amara’s Law reminds us that while technological revolutions may not materialize as quickly as we initially anticipate, their long-term influence can be profound and transformative.
The implications of this law are vast for entrepreneurs, innovators, and society in general. It requires careful thought and planning to navigate through the waves of inflated expectations in the short term while preparing to take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities that technology will unlock in the future.
Let us not be blinded by the hypes of technology in the short term, but let us prepare for its transformative effect in the medium and long term.
History is full of examples of predictions that have been far surpassed by reality, and the era in which we find ourselves will be radically transformative for human beings.
Have a good week!
