Page 40 - MSDN Magazine, November 2019

EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGY
Preparing for the
Exponential
Technology Revolution
Mark Michaelis
The world you know is about to change in profound and radical ways. A historic confluence of emerging technologies, powered by ubiquitous connectivity and advances like artificial intelligence (AI), are poised to complement and catalyze each other to change the way we work, play, relate and live.
Right about now, you probably know this isn’t going to be your usual MSDN Magazine article. While the magazine remains committed to code-level guidance for developers, this final issue offers an opportunity to ponder the future and how today’s tech- nology will shape and inform it. We stand at an inflection point in technology evolution, and we need to understand that it involves exponential change that will yield a world very different from the one we know. But it’s a chance, also, to explore the role and responsibility that we as developers will have as we engage with and enable the coming tide of innovation. There are moral and ethical choices ahead of us, also, and grappling with them will be a core challenge of the coming age.
Needless to say, readers of MSDN Magazine are uniquely impacted by the accelerating technological forces changing our world. Developers like you right now are writing the code that drive the systems that will shape our future. In this, the final issue of MSDN Magazine, I can think of no more fitting topic for exploration.
Understanding Exponential Technologies
To grasp the coming technology revolution, it’s necessary to under- stand the concept of an exponential technology. Consider for example the graph in Figure 1, which tracks the growth in the number of photos taken annually worldwide. Since 2000, the emergence of digital cameras, and then camera-equipped cell phones, has driven skyrocketing growth. In 2000, about 86 billion photos were taken. Twelve years later, that number was 380 billion.
The problem with charts like this, and the numbers underlying them, is that they illuminate exponential trends in hindsight, only after they’ve already happened. Forecasting exponential growth is difficult because we’re tuned for linear thinking—we struggle to grasp the magnitude of exponential trends.
To recognize exponential trends early—when growth still looks linear—you need to identify the key technology improvement that drives it. In the case of digital photography—and many other exponential technologies—that driver is digitization.
Digitization is closely associated with exponential technology because it tends toward zero cost. The more digital photos you take, the closer the cost per photo approaches free. Even digital storage isn’t far from a zero-cost item—there are numerous cloud providers
This article discusses:
• The confluence of numerous emerging exponential technologies
• The challenge of identifying exponential technologies
• The unique role developers play in enabling exponential tech- nologies and determining their societal impacts
Technologies discussed:
Exponential Technologies, Responsible Innovation
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