Here's the first paragraph from a review written by Michael Shermer of the book "Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think" by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotle:
If every image made and every word written from the earliest stirring of civilization to the year 2003 were converted to digital information, the total would come to five exabytes. An exabyte is one quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes—or just think of it as the number one followed by 18 zeros. That's a lot of digital data, but it's nothing compared with what happened from 2003 through 2010: We created five exabytes of digital information every two days. Get ready for what's coming: By next year, we'll be producing five exabytes every 10 minutes. How much information is that? The total for 2010 of 912 exabytes is the equivalent of 18 times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written. The world is not just changing, and the change is not just accelerating; the rate of the acceleration of change is itself accelerating.
That's an astonishing amount of information. Moore's law, the famous 1965 prediction that the number of transistors on a chip would double in 18 months, turned out to be fairly accurate. But now it seems quaintly old fashioned.
The concept of exponential advancement affects everything technology touches. And the message to doomsayers, according to Mr. Shermer, is that technology will raise the standard of living for everyone on the planet. And that's probably right. He's also probably right to say "The biggest hurdles, however, are not scientific or technological but political."
If today more people have access to a cellphone than to a toilet, that suggests it takes less of an investment to get them the cellphones than toilets. If a country doesn't have adequate protection of property rights, there won't be the foundation on which to build the infrastructure necessary to provide them with toilets.
But a bad government is an obstacle that can be overcome. So the glass is half full or half empty, depending on our ability to take a realistic approach to the impediments that appear in the path.
But just so we don't leave too happy, be sure to read the latest piece from Stewart Baker decrying "Moore's Outlaws," cyber-criminals "whose ability to penetrate networks and to cause damage is increasing exponentially thanks to the growing complexity, vulnerability, and ubiquity of insecure networks. If we don’t do something, and soon, we will suffer network failures that dramatically change our lives and futures, both as individuals and as a nation." Dang. A half empty glass.