Unfortunately, the scientific laws for energy, nutrition or climate change don’t reflect the exponential laws of the computer world. You can't drive twice as far with a litre of petrol every 18 months, nor can you double the yield from the same agricultural plot every 18 months through technological advances.
Progress in developing better batteries for electric cars, smartphones or hearing aids, is also lamentably slow: the energy density (stored energy per kilogram) of the lithium-ion batteries used in these systems hasn’t even doubled in the last 10 years. Despite the many spectacular results from the research labs, we’re unlikely in the next few years to see any new battery concepts that could drive energy density up exponentially. Energy density of batteries and yields from farmland have physical limits that cannot simply be dispelled by sweeping promises. So while digitisation may help make vehicles, electricity grids or agriculture more efficient and sustainable, it will be in small steps rather than large strides.
Great gains
We urgently need progress in fields such as global food supply, climate change and sustainable energy supply – and this calls for extensive research and development, and a social rethink. On these crucial issues, it will not be disruptive steps that speedily fill company coffers. Real investments in the future are long-term and capital-intensive; instead of generating enormous profits, they create a better world. It would be wonderful if IT companies and their visionary pioneers were to devote their exponentially growing profits more to the exponentially growing problems of our world, in order to solve the real challenges facing mankind. Because a better world would indeed be a great gain.
This text was published also in
the NZZ.
