Our exponential world

Do you constantly hear about how the world will be completely transformed in the next 25 years, but find it hard to believe? I guess we all do. It's human nature—change feels gradual, no matter how quickly it comes at us.

But stay with me here. There is very logical evidence to suggest why a transformation beyond your wildest dreams will occur in the next 2-3 decades. Why? Because of the exponential nature of change!

Things that sound crazy today, like creating a 1:1 digital twin, living your best life in the metaverse, reversing your biological age, living eternally in a digital world, and having abundant free energy, are no longer predictions from eccentric scientists but increasingly realistic scenarios.

The evidence, I believe, can be found in the numbers already available to us.

It is well known that some technologies in the world evolve at exponential speeds. Digging deeper, I was surprised to learn how many developments are truly exponential. While some may eventually turn out to be S-curves, we are currently in the steep growth phase.

Consider the development of the world's population, using the median estimation for the year 2100. It is astonishing how little happened in the first 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, compared to the explosive growth thereafter.

Or take the average lifespan in Europe, for example. While its development is not exactly exponential, it is quite close.

And, of course, anything related to computing and electronics exhibits much steeper curves in much shorter time frames. Below, see the size of the leading games and total cloud storage as examples:

Now, let's consider the context if we look at AI compute increase versus traditional compute increase. I have chosen a more conservative estimate of doubling time—between 4 months—which is much lower than Elon Musk's predictions and slightly lower than what OpenAI has observed in the last 10 years.

What is amazing here is to see how AI development completely dwarfs the exponential development of traditional compute. Of course, no one can be sure that the doubling time of AI will continue at 4 months or less, but on the other hand, the doubling of computer power has been stable for over 50 years.

My conclusion is that more change will happen in the next 25 years than we have experienced in the last 1000 years. Before you dismiss me as crazy, just look at the world population or lifespan chart. More change happened from 1900-2000 than in several hundred years.

Change is now driven by technologies that are hyper-exponential, so why would it be unlikely that the next 25 years will see more change than the last 1000?

Of course, the rate of change will not be evenly distributed, but the next 2-3 decades are likely to bring very radical and exponential changes.