Exponential Change
As human beings we usually think of growth, development, and progress in linear terms. Modern technological development, by contrast, follows an exponential growth curve. In order to better prepare for the future and more fully realize our potential, we must learn to recognize and more fully understand exponential growth. For Mormon Transhumanists, this is more than a technological observation: accelerating change is something Mormon prophecy has long anticipated in its own vocabulary.
Exponential vs Linear Rates of Change
Nature has always grown exponentially—each chamber of the nautilus builds proportionally on the last. Human intuition expects the straight line; the world more often delivers the spiral.
Linear growth is growth that happens at a constant, easily predictable rate—like someone aging: it goes up by one year, every year. By contrast, exponential growth is growth that happens cumulatively at a faster and faster rate over time—like bacteria multiplying in a petri dish, or compounding interest in a savings account. The growth rate isn’t constant; it accelerates.
Human beings usually have an easier time understanding linear growth or progress. But when we look closely at change plotted over time, we can learn to recognize exponential growth patterns all around us. This is important because, whether or not we recognize the exponential growth patterns, we are subject to their effects and consequences.
The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that’s something peculiar to our time. I don’t think our grandparents had to live with that.
Most technological development today follows an exponential growth curve. The power of our tools and our technologies is increasing not at a steady, constant, linear rate, but at a rapidly accelerating rate. For example: if computer processing power had progressed linearly over the last 60 years, the same processing power that handled calculations sending astronauts to the moon would today occupy roughly ten square feet. Instead, that processing power today fits into a tiny microchip inside a hand-held smartphone—tens of thousands of times smaller than our linear predictions would have anticipated.
So that means that the twentieth century wasn’t a hundred years of change at today’s rate of change, because we’ve been speeding up. It was actually twenty years of change at today’s rate of change. Exponential change is quite explosive, so in the next century we’ll make about twenty thousand years of change at today’s rate of progress—about a thousand times greater than the twentieth century, and that century was no slouch for change.
Moore’s Law and the Power of Belief
The computing power that sent astronauts to the moon now fits in a pocket—tens of thousands of times smaller than linear prediction would have anticipated. Moore's Law is not a law of nature but a record of sustained human vision and effort: a parable of faith and works.
This exponential trend of computer processors getting smaller and more powerful was observed by Gordon Moore in the 1960s, and has been coined Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law has reliably predicted this exponential trend for more than half a century. Projecting into the future is harder; shrinking transistors eventually runs into atomic limits, but the end of one technique is not the end of the trend. After all, the exponential growth of computing predates the silicon chip itself, having already leapt from electromechanical relays to vacuum tubes to transistors to integrated circuits. New paradigms are emerging again: massively parallel processors that put thousands of cores to work at once, chips built upward into three dimensions, new semiconductor materials beyond silicon, optical computing that substitutes light for electrons, and reversible computing that approaches the theoretical minimum of energy per operation. Researchers have already built complete computers smaller than a grain of salt, and are experimenting with computation in single molecules and strands of DNA.
Moore’s Law is really a thing about human activity, it’s about vision, it’s about what you’re allowed to believe. Because people are really limited by their beliefs, they limit themselves by what they allow themselves to believe about what is possible.
Carver Mead’s observation deserves emphasis. Moore’s Law is not a law of nature; it is a record of sustained human effort, coordinated vision, and faith in what is possible. Exponential progress happens because communities of people keep believing it can and keep working to make it so. In this sense, the most famous exponential trend in technology is also a parable about faith and works.
We don’t know how far these trends will go, but the practical impact of what Moore’s Law describes on society in the past 50 years is almost impossible to overstate. Recognizing and understanding the difference between linear and exponential progress is essential in preparing for the future.
A singular Dispensation
Mormon theology already has a name for an epoch of accelerating, culminating change: the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. Mormons understand the present era as one in which God’s work is accelerating—in which all the truths, blessings, and powers of past ages are being restored and gathered, and “many great and important things” are yet to be revealed. Much like the accelerating change anticipated by futurists, Mormons envision a swift and comprehensive unfolding of God’s work in the present age.
Some of the latest and highest achievements of man in the utilization of natural forces approach the conditions of spiritual operations. To count the ticking of a watch thousands of miles away; to speak in but an ordinary tone and be heard across the continent; to signal from one hemisphere and be understood on the other though oceans roll and roar between; to bring the lightning into our homes and make it serve as fire and torch; to navigate the air and to travel beneath the ocean surface; to make chemical and atomic energies obey our will—are not these miracles?
Seen through this lens, exponential change is less a secular idea Mormons must accommodate than a pattern Mormon prophecy has long described in its own vocabulary. And Joseph Smith’s doctrine of eternal progression—that intelligence, capacity, and godliness are not fixed states but ongoing, compounding achievements—provides a theological grammar for exponential growth. Both describe a universe in which growth builds on growth, without a final ceiling. For Mormon Transhumanists, exponential technological change is not surprising. It is what eternal progression looks like from the inside of an early epoch.
Acceleration Is Not an Excuse for Recklessness
If change is accelerating, so is the moral urgency of foresight. Exponential change raises the stakes of our choices; it does not make our choices for us.
Some futurists project that accelerating change converges toward what Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have called the Singularity: a point where technological change exceeds our present capacity for prediction. Whether or not such a moment arrives on any particular schedule, the prospect of rapidly compounding technological power carries serious—even existential—risks that should be earnestly reviewed and mitigated.
This is why Mormon Transhumanism is not accelerationism. We do not believe that faster is automatically better, or that exponential trends excuse us from deliberation. The Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation commits us “to identify and prepare for risks and responsibilities associated with future advances, and to persuade others to do likewise.” If change is accelerating, then the moral urgency of wisdom, foresight, and careful stewardship is accelerating too. Exponential change raises the stakes of our choices; it does not make our choices for us.
Questions for Discussion
- What is the difference between linear and exponential growth curves?
- How has society been impacted by Moore’s Law in the last 50 years?
- Carver Mead describes Moore’s Law as being “about what you’re allowed to believe.” In what ways is sustained technological progress a function of faith and collective effort?
- What parallels do you see between the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times and the idea of accelerating technological change? Where might the parallel break down?
- How does the doctrine of eternal progression relate to the idea of compounding, open-ended growth?
- When we consider technological growth in exponential terms, what opportunities and risks do you see on the horizon?
- What are some of the potential risks of failing to understand technological growth in exponential terms? What are the potential benefits of properly understanding it?
- If change is accelerating, what responsibilities follow for those who recognize it? Does acceleration increase or decrease our obligation to deliberate carefully?
- Does recognizing the exponential character of technological development make you more hopeful or more nervous about the future?
Advance to Primer 5