Agree, this misconception (and seeing it everywhere) is one of the things that made me wrote the article (particularly the part about “exponentional growth vs. s-curves).
The other side of it is when people think that trends are made of a single s-curve, and think that when growth is slowing down, that means that the trend is done forever, rather than simply the start of another s-curve when the constraint is defeated.
Yes, I think it’s an excellent article, especially the observation about constraints. If we can correctly identify which elements are constraining a system we have a path to return to exponential growth.
Still, we’ll see articles lamenting that “despite how we’ve overcome Constraint X, growth hasn’t returned.” The world is multi-causal/multi-factoral, though. More than one factor can constrain growth. It is often an engineering problem, and focusing on the system as driven by rationally understandable forces is important. Otherwise the default seems to be to view trends as ‘magical growth’ and make illogical predictions based on that thinking.
In the case of growth in the computer hardware industry, where you have a veritable army of engineers focused on the problem, is it any wonder we continuously overcome constraints?
Agree, this misconception (and seeing it everywhere) is one of the things that made me wrote the article (particularly the part about “exponentional growth vs. s-curves).
The other side of it is when people think that trends are made of a single s-curve, and think that when growth is slowing down, that means that the trend is done forever, rather than simply the start of another s-curve when the constraint is defeated.
Yes, I think it’s an excellent article, especially the observation about constraints. If we can correctly identify which elements are constraining a system we have a path to return to exponential growth.
Still, we’ll see articles lamenting that “despite how we’ve overcome Constraint X, growth hasn’t returned.” The world is multi-causal/multi-factoral, though. More than one factor can constrain growth. It is often an engineering problem, and focusing on the system as driven by rationally understandable forces is important. Otherwise the default seems to be to view trends as ‘magical growth’ and make illogical predictions based on that thinking.
In the case of growth in the computer hardware industry, where you have a veritable army of engineers focused on the problem, is it any wonder we continuously overcome constraints?