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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

Peter Norvig is wrong. He claims that "Any technology that surpasses 50% penetration will never double again (in any number of months)," but the raw foodism reached 100% penetration millions of years ago, fell off sharply after the discovery of fire, and has doubled several times in the past couple of decades.

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It depends on the unit that is doubling. From how I read the claim, Peter Norvig is using penetration percentage as such unit. Once you reach 50%, doubling means 100%, which is very unlikely since it is almost certain that somewhere in the world there is someone that does not use certain technology (meaning writing, clothing, radio, cellphones or whatever...). In short: the claim is just a clever joke :)

Yes, we got the joke. But suppose in 50 years we come up with a cool technology that is so good it drives cell phone penetration down to 1% (ie young people growing up then never buy cell phones). Then cell phones can make a comeback and double to 2%. And double again to 4%, etc.

But then, as far as business is concerned, hasn't it already been shown that the cool new technology was a replacement for cell phones? Assuming CoolTech isn't subsequently found to cause the sudden onset of rickets in its users (or whatever), the market for [stuff that stuff that satisfies the need for cell phones] is still saturated. The market won't start roaring again the way it was; cell phones can only cannibalize CoolTech's portion of the market.

The latent Apple analogy is making me uncomfortable now, so I'll stop here.

If my_var=current_penetration(Time.now) is at 55%, you'll never double my_var. You'll only be able to double something else. You're trying to use the term "current penetration" at two different times to get different results to change what was supposed to double.

One could argue, that "raw foodism" isn't really technology. In your example the technology would be "fire" or "cooking".

But isn't it the population that's 100%, not how much food each gets?

You missed cperciva's point.

Any technology that passes 50% penetration can indeed double again if in the future it goes below 50%.

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