The World in 2030

The World in 2030 57
driven by advances in computer power and miniaturisation
– for example in drug development, mobile phones and
cellular networks, the internet, nanotechnology and brain
scanners. In fact, almost all technological development is
now wholly dependent on the computer (which itself is
wholly dependent on plastic components).
In April 1965 Gordon Moore, 108 one of the two founders
of the chip maker Intel, saw an article of his published in the
American publication Electronics Magazine. He wrote:
The complexity for minimum component costs has
increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per
year... 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 10 years. That
means by 1975, the number of components per integrated
circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I
believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single
wafer. 109
This prediction was proved correct and the phenomenon
of computer power continuing to double every two years
became so startling that the visionary observation came to
be honoured as ‘Moore’s Law.’ 110
Today, even though ‘Moore’s Law’ is often evoked
(usually inaccurately) to describe the high speed of
microprocessor and computer development, the concept
has become something of a self-fulfilling prediction (more