By Jim McNiven
Last week, a 25-year old
Texas man, who heads up a virtual company called Defense Distributed,
successfully tested a plastic pistol, all of whose 16 parts, with one
exception, were made by a 3-D printer. This is a machine that ‘prints’ solid
plastic objects by laying down coat after coat of a liquid plastic according to
a computer-program ‘blueprint’. See:
The inventor then put his
blueprints on the web, taking them down after the US Government claimed he was
violating an arms export law, but not before 100,000 people had downloaded the
program. Welcome to the newest adaptation of Moore’s Law.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, the
inventor of the integrated circuit silicon ‘chip’, gave a speech where he noted
that, since the invention of the chip in 1958, it seemed that the number of
transistors on a chip could be expected to double every two years or so. And
thus it has happened, to this very day….See:
Doubling the computing
capacity of a chip doesn’t sound like a big thing, but I would argue that
‘Moore’s Law’ is the single most important force in global society. The
practical spinoffs have transformed how all 6 billion of us live and how we
behave. It has created and wrecked industries, given us all means to talk to
each other, threatened religious beliefs and practices, changed medicine,
globalized the planet and made some people fabulously wealthy. Yet, most people
have never heard of Gordon Moore and his Law.
The implication of Moore’s
Law is that computers will be able to do twice as much two years from now as
they can today. So, we went from the first email in 1972 to instant text
messaging today. We went from ‘Pong’ in 1981 to using gaming software in
simulations and to guide drones. We download newspapers and blogs like this
one, helping the bottom to drop out of the forest industry. We went from
Canadian manufacturers in 1990 to Asian outsourcing in 2000 to, come tomorrow,
3-D printing at new Canadian parts companies.
Most of the things we can do
today are things we could not do yesterday, not because we were stupider or
less inventive yesterday, but because we did not know how to make them real.
Leonardo da Vinci could lay out the principles for a helicopter and a diving
suit in the early 1500s, but the ability to turn these ideas into reality was
400 years off.
Today, that process in a lot
of fields is drastically compressed. As fast as chip capacity expands, somebody
finds a way to either meet a new consumer need or to drive down the cost of
existing retail outlets, movie film consumption, want-ads, and a host of other
services. No one knows when we will reach the limits of Moore’s Law and chip
density will taper off: some say maybe in 7-10 years or so.
But think, in 7 years, this
capability could increase by nearly 10 times over what it is now. Driverless
cars are being tested now, mechanical systems in planes and automobiles are
beginning to be replaced by electronic systems while postal systems across the
world are beginning to collapse. And political statements are being made by
characters testing plastic pistols made by a 3-D printer. What else will one be
able do with a 3-D printer, 2023-model?
The critical consideration
for anyone involved with Boomerswork is that one of the valuable skills needed
in any organization is the ability to perceive and manage the changes wrought
by Moore’s Law. Whether one is looking to hire a person or is looking for a
project or task to take on, management people have to bring an understanding
that comes with experience along with a sensitivity to what is new and changing
in the organization’s environment. Young people can adapt to the new
capabilities that come along with every new generation of chips and will be
able to work with them, but there will be that continuing management need to understand their implications so as to
take advantage of the opportunities they present.
The next time you think to
use the terms ‘high technology’ or ‘new technology’, bite your tongue. Moore’s
Law is almost 50 years old now and has been a normal part of all young people’s
lives. It ain’t ‘new’ and it ain’t ‘high’. It is the basic, though invisible,
rule that has governed us all for a long time—and will continue to do so. Figure
out what it can do for and to your organization.
