[ExI] Gordon Moore Quote, Extropy and Panspermia

[Kelly Anderson]

I was listening to Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame) giving a talk on
youtube... and he said something that I thought was worth writing
down...

While referring to the increase in the exponent itself .... he said,
"What amazes me more than anything is this acceleration... I think we
have our own form of dark energy. I don't understand it in cosmology
and it's just about as hard to understand as it fits in here..."
  - Gordon Moore

I am coming more and more to the opinion that when Kurzweil talks
about the Law of Accelerating Returns, he is tapping into something
bigger than even he is letting on. I think that the emergence of
complexity may be a law of thermodynamics. I think it may be a
fundamental aspect of physics... extropy may be more than a mailing
list, it may be a law of the universe. If it is in fact a law of the
universe, then that gives a logical mathematical basis for believing
in galactic panspermia... 100,000,000 years is a very short time to
come up with single cells at the rate things were changing 4 billion
to 3.9 billion years ago... Just some food for thought. This isn't
Moore's idea, it's mine... so don't saddle him with my crazy idea.

Other highlights of the talk were that they are doing
photo-lithography (this might be a few year old talk) on the scale of
a third of a wavelength of the light they were using to do the
lithography. That's just too cool. Also, that a constant for Intel
over the years is that chips have always sold on the order of a
billion dollars per acre. That's a fun way to think of it. He was also
talking about how they were getting quantum leaking through the
substrate because it was so very thin. Two dimensional Moore's Law
will run out of steam around 2020, apparently, due to physical
limitations related to the size of atoms.. but that there is always
the third dimension to play with. Chips will undoubtedly have to start
getting thicker and more complex in a third dimension if we are to
continue the curve. Even new flat technologies based on something
besides silicon dioxide won't help because atoms are atoms... the
third dimension is the only way out unless you can figure out how to
use subatomic particles. 3D silicon seems easier than harnessing
subatomic particles to me... but what do I know?

-Kelly