We Live in a World of “Killer Applications”

It used to be that every so often a new technology would come along and change the rules of the game. These were technologies like the printing press, gunpowder, the steam engine, or the atomic bomb. Such technological innovations were rare in history and occurred over the course of generations.

What is different today, and so challenging to policy, law, and ethics, is the incredible pace of the emergence of new technologies. It was once commonplace for entire generations to pass without a single technological breakthrough that significantly altered the way people worked, communicated, fought, or played. By the so-called “age of invention” in the late 1800s, transformative innovations were appearing around once every decade or so. Today, with the ever-accelerating pace of technological development (best illustrated by Moore’s Law, the finding that, over the last forty years, microchips – and related developments in computers – double their power and capability every eighteen months), wave after wave of new inventions and technologies that are literally rewriting the rules of the game are bursting onto the scene with an ever-increasing pace. From robotic planes that strike targets 7,000 miles away to man-made cells assembled from DNA created out of chemicals in a laboratory, the types of technologies that are being developed now are astounding, yet they are appearing with such regularity that we are almost numb to their historic importance.