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

Re: S curve

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I can tell you the difference between a single-blade and a twin-blade shave: the single-blade is better. A lot better. What makes the twin-blade shavers remarkable is not that they have two blades or anything like that, but that the disposable cartridges are designed so that you can grasp the handle and carelessly scrape the blades across your face without cutting yourself.

The double-edged, single-bladed safety razors introduced in 1903 had nearly sixty years to evolve before the introduction of the cartridge razor. And they remain the ideal tool for shaving. Yes, you can cut yourself with them: on the other hand, if you're not an idiot and know how to use one, you get the best shave possible with the current technology.