Moore's Law which was first espoused by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, essentially and correctly predicted that technology speed and decreasing price would double every 18 months.
Futurist, Ray Kurzweil in his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, spoke of the "The Law of Accelerating Returns" and further explored the exponential growth of technology. In recent years Kurzweil has predicted that Moore's Law will end as a paradigm in the early 2020s and be replaced by another paradigm.
I am not a technologist, but sometimes I am able to see into the future when I work with CEOs and companies to reboot their "visionary" engines when they have stalled (usually from CEOs trying to run companies).
So here's my shot at the future.
The basis of it comes from my recent work with China Foundations in improving Chinese-American cooperation between American ex-pats and Chinese workers at Fortune 500 companies in China, and my growing interest in the Yin Yang Chinese paradigm where essentially yin represents what is female (i.e. soft, about connectivity, community, bonding, oxytocin and estrogen, etc.) and yang represents what is male (i.e. aggressive, ambitious, competitive, adrenaline and testosterone, etc.).
I believe that Moore's Law will end in the 2020s because exponential (= Yang) growth will no longer be relevant. To me, the speed of technological advance is transitioning from infancy to childhood. By that I mean it is like "turbocharging an infant's tricycle" which races in all directions -- often bouncing off and into walls -- because it lacks a purpose and mission other than speed and amassing more fun and excitement. When we reach the 2020s, technology will shift into adolescence and possibly early adulthood where yang will be balanced by yin and brightness, smartness and quickness will be balanced and informed by wisdom, purpose, meaning and community.
By the 2020s, the real purpose and mission of technology a la Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. will be revealed to not be about getting people more, sooner. Instead it will be about providing a platform for connectivity and transparency never before seen in the history of humankind.
And since I am an optimist, I believe that platform will be completely utilized by millennials and the generation after them to jettison the current and near future leaders who lead from a mindset of paranoia, amassing power and a zero sum approach to the world. That is because such an approach will be deemed to be irrelevant as the millennial and further generations see those leaders' paranoid POV to be delusional and not serving the masses of people beneath them who will be connected through technology. What will occur will be a collective realization by the masses that "the emperors don't have any clothes."
In essence I believe that when Moore's Law ends in the early 2020s, technology will shift to its true purpose and mission. It will be the engine that fuels "the rising tide that lifts all hopes."
I only hope I'm alive long enough to get a taste of it.