links for 2010-08-20

Linear thinking about the future is hardwired into our brains. Linear predictions of the future were quite sufficient when our brains were evolving. At that time our most pressing problem was figuring out where that animal running after us was going to be in 20 seconds. Linear projections worked quite well thousands of years ago and became hardwired. But exponential growth is the reality of information technology. We’ve seen smooth exponential growth in the price-performance and capacity of computing devices since the 1890 U.S. census in the capacity of wireless data networks for over 100 years and in biological technologies since before the genome project. There are dozens of other examples. This exponential progress applies to every aspect of the effort to reverse-engineer the brain. via @technoshamen