Moore’s law and folks like Ray Kurzweil have for decades been driving the point that this isn’t a single event, but a trend that will continue indefinitely. I don’t buy it myself, but it’s now become conventional wisdom.

We’ve been taught for decades that chips will double in performance every 18 months (I know Moore said transistor count, not performance). It’s now turning out to be untrue. We think about the singularity all the time, but haven’t properly considered what will happen if technology improvements stall.