Well-known futurist Ray Kurzweil has
written extensively on the impact of rapid change -- with obvious implications
on the need for Knowledge as a Service℠
According Kurzweil, the rate of change
predicted by Moore’s Law — and, in fact, the history of all human progress — is
just one segment of a much longer line plot in which both the X- and Y-axes are
logarithmic. This effect of
ever-accelerating rates of change is called the technological
singularity. If you take 15
well-known lists of major historic events — extending from the present back to
before life first appeared on Earth — they all roughly fall in a straight line
on a double-logarithmic graph.
Take, for example, the Human Genome
Project. In 1990, when the $3 billion
project was funded, experts predicted it would take over a century to map the
entire human genetic code. It actually
took until 2003. Today you can have
yours done in a week for under $1,000.
The reason for the name “singularity”
is because the effect is a complete disconnect with how people predict the
future — which is to say, linearly.
According to the American Society of Training and Documentation the
total amount of knowledge in the world doubles every 18 months — the same rate
at which the number of transistors on an integrated circuit increases,
according to Moore’s Law. However, both
assertions assume linear progress. We
know already that the rate of both computational power and storage density are
actually growing faster than Moore’s law predicts -- and accelerating -- as new
technologies replace miniaturized transistors as the basic computing unit.
And as information technology grafts
onto other technologies, notably biotech, you’ll start to see the same effect
of increasingly accelerated change in human development as well.
The singularity’s implications are
obviously profound and perhaps for the most part unfathomable. But one thing is fairly clear. That’s the growing need for just-in-time
knowledge delivery. As rates of change
accelerate at ever-faster rates, just-in-time knowledge delivery will be key
for helping people keep up. As change increases
exponentially, it creates a Knowledge Singularity. People can’t predict what they will need to
know to do their jobs before they need to know it.
The whole subject of Singularity reminds me of Jon Von Neumann. In the 50's he thought we would be able not just predict the weather but *control* it. It was just a matter of number crunching.
Turns out the atmosphere is more complex than he thought. 50 years later, computers more powerful than Von Neumann would have ever dreamed of still fail miserably at predicting the weather mere days in advance - let alone telling us how to control it.
And speaking of the Human Genome: if the task was a major feat, it hasn't had nearly as much impact as we thought it would have. Cracking the mysteries of our world often takes more than number crunching.
Yes, the human mind has a hard time grasping exponentials, whether Moore's Law or compounded interests. But trying to make predictions with a calculator in hand doesn't make us any more precise.
Posted by: Laurent | October 30, 2009 at 06:37 PM
Laurent - Good point. Although I am not sure when the "technological singularity" that Ray mentions will be realized by mankind.
However if we look at the last 20-30 years of human history, we see an explosion of computational processing power and the resulting information avalanche. To me this necessitate the need for a "just-in-time" knowledge acquisition systems similar to what we pioneered in the manufacturing sector for supply chain of materials. As it would simply not be possible for us to keep up with the pace of information change.
At cumulusIQ we are pioneering the commercialization of a "human powered" knowledge-as-a-service model, that allows organizations to get on-demand access to knowledge and deal with the effects of what we call "The Knowledge Singularity".
Ps: If you are interested, here is the link to our White Paper on KaaS: http://bit.ly/Knowledge_as_a_Service
Posted by: Monty Kalsi | November 03, 2009 at 02:24 PM