Nine years to the Singularity

[avram]

Someone at The Economist with a bit of extra time on his hands was looking at the recent proliferation of many-bladed razors, and noticed that the time gap between blade increments seems to be shrinking: 70 years before someone added the second blade, a couple of decades to the third, only two or three years between the four-bladed Schick Quattro and the five-bladed Gillette Fusion. Might there be a Moore’s Law for razors blades? Hence the chart over there.

Now, that power-law curve predicts 14-bladed razors by the year 2100, but that’s not the interesting curve. The interesting curve is the hyperbolic one, for two reasons: One, it matches the real-world data. And two, it goes to infinity in 2015. And how are you going to get an asymptotically-accelerating number of blades onto a razor? Why, you’d need godlike super-technology to do that.

Right. There it is, proof of the approaching Vingean Singularity, sooner than anyone expected it, clear as the chin on your face.

(Update!)

Comments

another factor

[(Anonymous)]

A factor this study didn't include may allow us to start the curve much earlier and get some interesting results: not mentioned was the SIZE of the blade involved. Early shaving systems used hand-held, general purpose knives, which evolved over time into the straight razor, a smaller, special purpose blade. With the advent of the safety razor, which was invented in the 1890's but didn't achieve widespread acceptance until WW I, the blade shrank still further. There were several intermediate reductions in size (e.g. Schick injector) between the original safety razor and the advent of the first 2-bladed device. Projecting this curve leads us to nanoblades, each specifically targeted to a single hair, so that with one swipe, the entire beard can be removed in record time.

Re: another factor

[pavel-lishin.livejournal.com]

It won't even be a razor, per se. It'll be a sort of mask, custom-fitted to your face. You'll just put your face in, and take it out, leaving any unwanted facial hair inside.

God help you if your face gets chubby, though.

Re: another factor

[(Anonymous)]

That's not possible actually unless there is a person in the world with infinite strings of beard on their face and I know even King Kong doesn't have that much hair