In The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee explain that their book “is about the second machine age unfolding right now — an inflection point in the history of our economies and societies because of digitization. It’s an inflection point in the right direction — bounty instead of scarcity, freedom instead of constraint — but one that will bring with it some difficult challenges and choices.”

In Chapter 3, they discuss an observation by Gordon Moore in an article published by Electronics magazine (April 19, 1965), “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits”:

“The complexity for minimum component costs [i.e. the amount of computing power that can be purchased for one dollar] has increased at a rate roughly a factor of two per year [i.e. double]…Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least ten years.”

According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, “Moore’s Law is very different from the laws of physics that govern thermodynamics or Newtonian classical mechanics. Those laws describe how the universe works; they’re true no matter what we do. Moore’s Law, in contrast, is a statement about the work of the computer industry’s engineers and scientists; it’s an observation about how constant and successful their efforts have been.We simply don’t see this kind of sustained success in other domains.”

I agree with Brynjolfsson and McAfee that constant modification over the years has made Moore’s Law “the central phenomenon of the computer age. Think of it as a steady drumbeat in the background of the economy.”

Those who share my high regard for The Second Machine Age are urged to check out two others: Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm (3rd Edition): Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers and Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation co-authored by Larry Downes and Paul Nunes.

Note: The two Moores are unrelated except in terms of their brilliant contributions to the impact of disruptive technologies on the global marketplace during the last 40-50 years.