“Hall’s Law: The 19th Century Prequel to Moore’s Law”, 2012-03-08 (; similar):
[Coins “Hall’s law”: “the maximum complexity of artifacts that can be manufactured at scales limited only by resource availability doubles every 10 years.” Economic history discussion of industrialization: the replacement of esoteric artisanal knowledge, based on trial-and-error and epitomized by a classic Sheffield steel recipe which calls for adding 4 white onions to iron, by formalized, specialized, rationalized processes such as interchangeable parts in a rifle produced by a factory system, which can create standardized parts at larger scales than craft-based processes, on which other systems can be built (once a reliable controlled source of parts exists). Examples include British gun-making, John Hall, the Montgomery Ward catalogue.]
I believe this law held 1825–135196064ya, at which point the law hit its natural limits. Here, I mean complexity in the loose sense I defined before: some function of mechanical complexity and operating tempo of the machine, analogous to the transistor count and clock-rate of chips. I don’t have empirical data to accurately estimate the doubling period, but 10 years is my initial guess, based on the anecdotal descriptions from Morris’ book and the descriptions of the increasing presence of technology in the world fairs. Along the complexity dimension, mass-produced goods increased rapidly got more complex, from guns with a few dozen parts to late-model steam engines with thousands. The progress on the consumer front was no less impressive, with the Montgomery Ward catalog offering mass-produced pianos within a few years of its introduction for instance. By the turn of the century, you could buy entire houses in mail-order kit form. The cost of everything was collapsing. Along the tempo dimension, everything got relentlessly faster as well. Somewhere along the way, things got so fast thanks to trains and the telegraph, that time zones had to be invented and people had to start paying attention the second hand on clocks.
…History is repeating itself. And the rerun episode we are living right now is not a pleasant one. The problem with history repeating itself of course, is that sometimes it does not. The fact that 1819–611880144ya map pretty well to 1959–53201212ya does not mean that 2012–2112 will map to 1880–100198044ya. Many things are different this time around. But assuming history does repeat itself, what are we in for? If the Moore’s Law endgame is the same century-long economic-overdrive that was the Hall’s Law endgame, today’s kids will enter the adult world with prosperity and a fully-diffused Moore’s Law all around them. The children will do well. In the long term, things will look up. But in the long term, you and I will be dead.
View External Link: