Nine years to the Singularity
Mar. 20th, 2006 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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!)
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The Schick Infini-T
Date: 2006-07-12 01:34 am (UTC)Personally, I'm holding out for the Wearable Norelco.
The Quintippio Megashave
Date: 2006-07-12 05:42 pm (UTC)Re: The Quintippio Megashave
Date: 2006-07-14 05:28 pm (UTC)The Infini-T has infinite blades, or your money back.
You'll note the year of its release at the bottom.
By that time, of course, all appliances are wireless.
Re: The Quintippio Megashave
Date: 2007-09-02 07:55 pm (UTC)Here's the current location of that image...