Beyond Moore’s Law and Beyond LA…

Last night I gave the last presentation I will give before I leave LA for good next week, as I’m moving to Seattle to join AWS. The topic was a bit of a thought experiment that I’ve been playing with for a while. Essentially asking “what happens if core tech advancement has slowed or plateaued permanently?” In doing so, I dive right into the core of Moore’s Law, which until recently defined the parameters of tech advances.

I did so with some caveats. For one, it’s not like advances have stopped. Second, it’s clear that advances will continue in areas other than semiconductor density. Whether these can continue to generate the kinds of exponential improvements we’ve been used to is impossible to know right now. I’m quite confident that the recent ability to link together larger and larger numbers of devices will continue to propel us for some time, even if advances in the devices themselves slow. That’s one of the reasons I’m joining AWS, to be honest.

A couple of months ago I gave a talk at “BIL” Los Angeles, explaining why sometimes it’s best to use the “crappiest” computer possible. I defined “crappy” not in terms of how broken it was, but in terms of how much it imposed constraints on your work. I specifically focused in on Raspberry Pis and similar.

I later refined this talk and gave it for PyData LA in October. That was the one where I zoomed out from “how can we benefit from thinking small” to the bigger question of “what if we have to because the exponential growth is over?”

Last night I gave a much less technical and more alcohol-infused version at Nerd Nite LA.

Unfortunately no video, but the slides are here.