"Moore's Law inspires the kind of techno-utopianism that believes, almost as an act of faith, that humanity can innovate itself out of the messes it creates by sheer cleverness."

Huh? What do you base that on? Before Moore humanity didn't think it could get itself out of messes by innovation?

Though Moore's Law can't possibly go on forever (I doubt few believed so) for multiple reasons (speed of light can't be exceeded) there are still other possible ways to increase computing speed. This ranges from the cool crazy science (quantum computing) to the mundane (IO speed on drives) to kick ass stuff that's already being done (distributive networks at google).

While CPU speed might indeed stop doubling (for the time being) that doesn't mean computers themselves will stop being faster and we'll have reach the peak oil of computing.

What percentage of the world population even knows about Moore's "Law", or even relates transistor density to why computers get faster? Yet somehow if that particular method of improvement hits a wall, it will have huge implications? Spare us the histrionics. Once computers reach the point of seamlessly handling video, and packing hours of it into a device smaller than a pack of cigarettes, can't we be satisfed with that for a bit?

As far as tech getting cheaper, that's more about efficient mass production and well-established tech manufacturing facilities being built out than Moore's Law. The improvements have been nice, but they aren't the only improvements. Storage speed and/or density still impacts many computing needs more than CPU power, and "the wall" on improvement in that area sounds to be a bit farther in the distance. Still, high speed wireless virtually everywhere is likely to be more noticable to our tech love/addiction in the next decade than raw processing speed or storage. Plus, once you have a fast connection anywhere you don't have to have as much speed or storage in your pocket.

If Moore's Law hitting a wall DID make people take note that technology improvements aren't guaranteed to solve the hard problems, so much the better. People who believe we'll solve all problems in ways that bear no cost or inconvenience are as dangerous as people who believe we don't need to take any care with the environment because God is going to end the world soon anyway.

Wasn't there anything real you could find to talk about today?

Size isn't the only thing that matters. If CPU technology stabilizes, maybe standards can be perfected. Maybe chip fabricators can stop frantically retooling and pay their shareholders more, or lower their prices. Maybe things won't go obsolete in mere months. The technology we have already has barely begun to do its transformative work.

The end of the revolution in processer size does not preclude a bunch of other revolutions. The music will just go into a new key.

The incident photonic illumination, in effect

Enabling...with this very very bright, very energetic

and very short pulse of light

at some vanishingly unbelievable wavelength..

Interested people with these really special 'microscopes' to look at...electrons.

Wha.? I thought Heisenberg's says that you can never 'know' both position and momentum ...(or is velocity?) of any electron.

Some workaround anyway.

The point being that we'll now see tinier and tinier and tinier and..

Maybe Moore's admonition will indeed hold.

I work in the semiconductor industry. I've worked in several areas of it. I can tell you, we already measure things in angstroms... but anyways, in the late eighties/early ninties people didn't think we'd be doing lithography (micropatterning) using traditional 'light' today over ten years ago. Lithography determines the smallest feature size on a chip. Guess what, we still do. At this point it was thought we'd be using e-beam machines that use electron beams to do patterning. Sure we might not keep up with moore's law for transistor size someday, but guess what: We'll still easily double computing power ever couple years no problem. Can't make your transistors smaller, stack more on each other, think of smarter computing algorithms, make transistors more efficient (big push for this right now) etc.

That isn't even touching ideas such as quantum computing. Innovations and progress will never stop. Just watch James Burke's Connections series. Technology will march forward at an ever increasing rate until humanity dies out.

One problem with technological features such as Moore's Law is that they can stifle or even have counterproductive consequences in other areas where improvements could be taking place.

When a hard limit is reached and further improvements are desired, then alternate technologies can be applied to help improve a system. So in the case of computers, we may not be able to cram more transistors into one particular area, but we certainly can find ways to use those transistors more efficiently, or just interconnect larger areas into more powerful devices, for the same cost.

One example is the limit that has been reached in CPU speeds. Intel wanted to produce devices that routinely exceed 3GHz of clock speed... but it could not do it reliably. Instead, they found that they can produce far faster systems by greatly lowering the clock speed and providing multiple devices, creating the dual-core and quad-core systems that we have today.

Another example is that of photographic sensors in digital cameras. The capability of photo sensors has not improved that much in the last ten years, but the layout of the cells, use of microlenses on top of the sensor, the image processing chips, they all have worked together to produce sensors that are vastly improved over similar devices from ten years ago. The chip hasn't changed that much, but the items surrounding it have.

So when Moore's law is reached, it will just mean that researchers will have to redirect their efforts in areas other than cramming more stuff into a given area, and the improvements will continue at their current pace, but for different reasons.

Surely Moore's Law will continue for centuries, until our silicon chips have transistors smaller than quarks. Of course by then they won't be made of silicon and maybe then we won't be made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Where in a J-curve baby, and there's one thing J curves teach us is that they go on and on forever! Look at the housing boom! Look at the dotcom boom! Baby, my Cisco stocks split twenty nine times and are still worth $200 each! I love America! Grow, baby grow! And have another white kid for Jesus!