Gordon Moore and Moore's Law May Have Expired At the Same Time

I had a conversation with a computer engineering professor about a week ago. He said he was skeptical about production chips getting smaller than 3 nanometers. IBM came up with a 2 nanometer chip last year in research. 2 nanometers is about the width of a DNA strand.

Intel's original chips were 10,000 nanometers. As Intel and other companies continued to make them smaller and smaller, Gordon Moore noted what became known as Moore's law: the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every 2 years.

Gordon Moore died yesterday, 55 years after cofounding Intel in 1968. It would be a fascinating thing if Moore's law held for the length of his lifetime and then reached its limit. Moore's Law was arguably the most impactful force of the last 55 years. It would be an amazing thing if his law were to expire with him, as if he were a Silicon monarch rather than, say, Solon the lawgiver who left us with a law.

Moore's law? Oh, it no longer governs. Moore is dead now.

Why AI Means That Kindergarten Teachers Will Make More Than College Professors

Fordism made previously expensive products affordable. The price of the Model T fell from $850 to $260 in 15 years.

What used to be so expensive that only a fraction of the population could afford it became so cheap that almost everyone could afford it.

AI will have the same dynamic for knowledge work. It is going to make previously costly services affordable for everyone.

Right now, only companies can afford to create custom software, to create apps that they use internally or sell to the outside world. Within a decade, anyone can afford to create custom software for their own use, to solve their own problems. The first trillionaire may well be the guy who offers the best interface for such app generation that makes it seem as natural as speech.

You'll hear more about embodied cognition with AI, knowledge that isn't easily transferred to disembodied cognition like AI. This will transform sectors like education.

Within a generation, kindergarten teachers will make more than college professors. Why? Dealing with 24 kindergarten students involves so much in the moment, embodied cognition, perception and response in ways that AI will take decades to catch up with. By contrast, the work of a college prof to create multimedia lectures to illustrate particular lessons is something AI will do within minutes, able even to customize follow on lessons after quizzes reveal what is and what is not being learned in the first iteration. Within a decade, AI will teach students more effectively than professors at podiums. Right now, the older your student the more you are paid; within a generation that will be reversed.

Dee Hock - the Man Who Accomplished in the 1960s What Every Crypto Entrepreneur Was Trying to Do in the 2020s

Dee Hock died last year. He did in the 1960s what every crypto entrepreneur aspired to do this decade.

He created a global systems for transferring money and making purchases across state and national boundaries. He was the first to realize that realize that money - which had been beads, gold, leaves, coins and pieces of paper - could be simply digital records and that creating such a system meant pushing the envelope on computer development so that you could easily draw from your bank in San Diego while making a purchase in Boston. Think of the simple genius in a credit card that makes a purchase as easily in Brno, Czech Republic as it does down the hill here in town, instantly converting your dollars into their koruna. And even better, it lets you decide each month whether that purchase was to be paid this month or was to become part of a floating loan (which you didn't have to explain to any banker through a laborious application process) which you paid off next month or next year. Instantaneous loan and currency conversion across borders, even when your banker is asleep back home.

His vision was a wild success. When he died last year, VISA had nearly 4 billion cards issued and annual volume of $19 trillion. (Global GDP is about $100 trillion. There are nearly 8 billion earthlings.)

His was a fascinating mind. His Twitter feed remains up, testament to his curious, often critical mind (both in terms of discerning and actual criticism of this modern world).

Here are just 3 of his tweets that you might not expect from one of the most influential bankers and capitalists of the 20th century.

"Originality and creativity do not result from rational, calculated effort, but from the natural state of consciousness - - - an open mind at play."

"In its beginning, few things are as delicate and fugitive as a new idea. But once deeply rooted in determined minds it's tenacity and growth are astonishing. It is incomparably more difficult to get it deeply and widely rooted than it is to discover it."

"Education has nothing to do with transmission of dogma, assertions of certainty or raking over ashes of the past that now dominates our schooling. It has everything to do with enflaming young minds to pursue questions not yet fully understood but essential to a better future."

A Fairly Dramatic, 12 Year Drop in Wealth Inequality

File under facts you won't hear because they aren't upsetting.

Since 2Q 2011, the wealth held by Americans in the bottom 50% of households has gone up from $262 billion to $4.5 trillion - so 17X more.

By contrast, the wealth held by the top 1% only went up 3X.

It is now $45 trillion.

That's fairly dramatic progress in wealth inequality. The top 1% used to have nearly 60X as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Now they have only 10X as much.

And if you think, "Well, that's hardly perfect," I'll remind you that before the Enlightenment philosophers came along with their "how do we make progress?" inquiry, we had a period when it was perfection and not improvement that was the goal. We now refer to that period as "the Dark Ages."