More to Come With Moore's Law?

In 1965, Gordon E. Moore wrote a paper describing a phenomenon he noticed in the computer chip industry. He found that " since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transisters that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years" (Wikipedia). So far, this has been proved true. What does this mean for us? First off, it means that computer technology is ever-changing and "getting better". It means that a better, faster, stronger piece of technology will arrive and be very expensive, but we can safely bet that after a couple years it will reduce in price because by then the latest and greatest technology will already be on the market to replace it's predecessors. Even the not-so computer savvy have seen this in their lifetime - the iPod. It's surprising to look at the facts, here James R. Stoup has a great article and breakdown of the iPod generations and their price per GB. As it stands, we are paying roughly 7 dollars per GB as opposed to the 80 dollars when it first hit the market. 7 dollars! 

N.B. In my opinion, it is helpful toexplain Moore's Law very loosley using this example, but Moore's Law is not meant to explain anything but circuit transistors. 

Will Moore's law hold true indefinitely? In my opinion, probably not. Again, according to Wikipedia, Moore was interviewed in 2005 and noted that because the amount of transistors has increased SO rapidly we are approaching the atomic level here. That soon, each molecule will have it's own space. He also points out that since the atom is pretty much as small as we get, the stopping point for Moore's law is very much in sight.  Despite the grim outlook, some believe that new technology could be invented that would perpetuate Moore's Law into the future. Intel certainly hopes so. They definitely pride themselves on the fact that Gordon E. Moore is one of their co-founders. On their company website they boast, Moore's Law: Made real by Intel Innovation. They are looking to the future, and purpose that Moore's Law may someday be responsible for the implementation of cars with autopilot and real-time language translators. That would be cool, but we'll see...