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Comment by wuschel | Hacker News Reader

I would argue there is more to an economy than processor speeds or price of transistors e.g. hardware security, software security, data integration, expansion of communication capabilities, not to mention other industries (biotech, transportation, energy), etc. Although I must admit that I do not know how much the increase in modern hardware capabilities contributes to the productivity of the economy. I disagree with your statement regarding significant future discoveries, as that is something that is very hard to predict.

If CPU and computer hardware become commodity, it would certainly be a new era of tinkering that is upon us. Perhaps more pressing problems than computational power f CPUs and transistor cost will then be attacked.

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> there is more to an economy that processor speeds ... I frankly do not know how much increase in modern hardware capabilities contributes to the productivity of the economy.

In industrial times, you would be right. However since the "information revolution", a huge amount of productivity gains can be directly attributable to transistors. Sure it started with improving simple calculators, but then came spreadsheets, industrial CAD models, instantaneous global communication, remote teams, global branding and a whole lot more.

In fact, it's pretty fair to say, that nearly every standard of living improvement in western countries since roughly 1980 can be attributable to the transistor.

> In fact, it's pretty fair to say, that nearly every standard of living improvement in western countries since roughly 1980 can be attributable to the transistor.

Very interesting statement.

Out of cusiosity, is there any way you could back it up e.g. chemical or biological research was not very digital for a long time after the 1980s. Of course, digitization was transformative in the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s, and it seems to me that it is just now where we are in that exponential growth of exploiting IC technology.

I quickly checked your impressive background, and I guess you have seen a lot of the IC sector in terms of innovation and technology. I believe that you are making a sound call here.

At the end, everything is intertwined. Advances in material science go back to IC design and production, and vice versa.

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