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Kurzweil’s law explains how innovation and technology development work through positive feedback. It was formulated by Ray Kurzweil and is exemplified in the computer and robotics industries. Kurzweil draws an analogy between biological processes and technological progress, both of which exhibit exponential growth.
Kurzweil’s law, or law of accelerating returns, explains how positive feedback works in innovation and technology development: If you invent a better set of tools, you can use those tools to invent new and better tools faster. Kurzweil’s law was formulated in response to a question posed to leading thinkers by Edge.org’s John Brockman, namely, “What’s your law?”
Ray Kurzweil is a leading technology entrepreneur, having founded four successful companies that remain leaders in their markets. He is also the best-selling author of The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Age of Intelligent Machines, among other futurist and scientific works.
Perhaps the best example of Kurzweil’s law in action is in the computer industry. Computers are continually being used to design better chips and indeed most of the details for new chip designs are worked out algorithmically by computers. Another example would be robotics, where finer, more flexible automation is used to make parts for even better robots.
In explaining Kurzweil’s Law, Kurzweil draws an analogy between how biological processes build, increasing order through evolution and positive feedback, and how humans invent new technologies. He claims that the growth of order in both of these processes is exponential, or even super-exponential, eventually approaching an asymptote of nearly infinite progress. He backs up Kurzweil’s law statement with dozens of graphs showing exponential rates of progress in many technological areas.
Kurzweil believes that evolutionary processes create more order than time, where order is defined as not simply the opposite of random content, but carrying information that fits a purpose. For evolution, the goal is survival and reproduction; for technology, it is to produce useful products that satisfy human needs. Although Kurzweil’s law was formulated specifically as a reference to technological progress, its parallels to biological evolution are clear. Indeed, a topic that interests many biologists is the evolution of evolvability.
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