To Chris Anderson’s credit, when speaking publicly he freely admits he tends to pursue a “theory-of-everything” model to everything he writes about, from his Long Tail thesis to his notion of everything switching to a free-plus model. (See his latest book, Free, which he has made available for free online; use Anderson’s favorite free-based business, Google, to find it.) Unfortunately Anderson doesn’t own up to his tendency toward generalization in his books, so I’m going to take a minute to address one dangerous assertion he makes in Free.

In fairness, this generalization has been made, it seems, by everyone affiliated with Silicon Valley in the last thirty years, and it’s reasonable because the phenomenon itself is powerful and transforming. I’m referring here to Moore’s Law. This is, in general, the principle that predicts that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years, credited to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. The implication is that computer power doubles every two years, although many now say that it in fact occurs about every eighteen months. All of us who have been using computers over the years (my first was the original Mac back in 1984 although I tinkered around on my mom’s IBM PS2 from 1982) can attest to how life-changing this phenomenon has been.

Anderson cites Moore’s Law conspicuously in Free, but uses his Theory-of-Everything approach in a much broader way, essentially applying this growth across all business models dealing with digital technology. As a result, he forces a creator trying to defend his rights to argue against something known as a “Law” (those with a science background know this isn’t a thoroughly proper application of the term). That’s tough work. Anderson essentially puts them in a position of arguing the impact of digital technology on their creative process and approaches to distribution is not comparable to Moore’s Law. It can be done, but the average reader likely will read Anderson’s analogy, nod, and move on without considering the absurdity of that stretch.

It is not unlike Anderson seizing on the fact that musicians can make money through live performances — something likely dating back to a caveman and a primitive flute or drum who would have played for food — and suggesting technology has somehow brought on a brave new world where this should be the only avenue of pursuit for earning a living. As ridiculous as that is for a musician — to surrender one avenue for profit in exchange for another one which has always existed and is unlikely to grow significantly from the sacrifice of the first one — extrapolate that model to novelists, photographers, songwriters and film directors, and you’ll quickly see the danger of generalization.

But let me point out something on Moore’s Law. It may not last forever. I will cite Michio Kaku, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a co-founder of string theory. In his current bestseller Physics of the Impossible, Kaku makes a startling prediction:

For the past fifty years or so the astounding growth in computer power has been fueled by the ability to create tiny silicon transistors, tens of millions of which can easily fit on your fingernail. Beams of ultraviolet radiation are used to etch microscopic transistors onto wafers made of silicon. But this process cannot last forever. Eventually, these transistors could become so small that they reach the size of molecules, and the process will break down. Silicon Valley could become a Rust Belt after 2020, when the age of silicon finally comes to an end.

Now Kaku is probably guilty of generalizing there with his last sentence, but like Anderson, he is trying to sell books, and cautious reflection doesn’t sell. I think Kaku knows that there are a lot of bright and clever folks in Silicon Valley. There have been at Intel and elsewhere lots of interesting research and developments in alternative computing power models, and even if silicon isn’t a big part of Silicon Valley, it’s fair to say that the region will still be a world leader in computer innovation.

But Moore’s Law will be no more. Why in particular? Kaku again:

The Pentium chip in your laptop computer has a layer about twenty atoms across. By 2020 that Pentium chip might consist of a layer only five atoms across. At that point the Heisenberg uncertainty principle kicks in, and you no longer know where the electron is. Electricity will then leak out of the chip and the computer will short-circuit. At that point, the computer revolution and Moore’s Law will hit a dead end because of the laws of the quantum theory.

FYI to all of the Star Trek fans out there; no one has yet invented a Heisenberg Compensator.

Perhaps Kaku will be wrong. Perhaps the man who is one of a half-dozen people on the planet to truly grasp what Erwin Schrödinger was telling us about a cat in a box lacks the vision to see ten years ahead with silicon chips. Lord Kelvin wasn’t always dead-on in his predictions, as Kaku himself notes in his new book.

But I find it telling that Anderson uses the phrase “theory of everything” to discuss his propensity to try to tie phenomena together in a nice package. Although I didn’t find myself cut out to be a scientist, I have had an unhealthy obsession about the pursuit of a Theory of Everything (tying together the various forces of the universe, from the very large-scale to the tiniest). I’ve read dozens of books on the subject, and have actually understood portions of some of them. In the 1990s, when my freelance writing business would hit a rough patch, I’d fantasize about moving to New Mexico and volunteering at the Santa Fe Institute in the hopes of playing some modest role in that crusade (after all, it’s multi-disciplinary, maybe they needed a writer/social scientist).

So I don’t just sympathize with Anderson in his grand inclinations, I think I emphathize with him, to use a term now in vogue. But just as the globe’s brightest minds still haven’t developed a unified theory (and Kaku speculates one may never come because the Uncertainty Principle may make impossible One Theory to Rule Them All), all readers of works such as Free need to remember that a solid example in one field or endeavor does not necessarily tell us anything about another field or endeavor.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators, internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.