If you’re a nerd, you know Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors that can cheaply be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 2 years. Gordon Moore, in his 1965 paper, was more right than he knew. It turns out that his law would become a predictor for not only the number of transistors, but also processor speed, memory capacity, computer system speed, mega pixels in digital cameras and a whole host of other high technology milestones. Moore was predicting that technology gets faster at an exponential rate and would continue to do so until something fundamentally changed.
Butter’s Law, based on Moore’s, says that fiber optic density is doubling at the even faster rate of every 9 months. That means that the fiber tubes (thanks Ted Stevens) in the ground right now can pack double the data every nine months! Wow.
Which leads me to Starks’ Law, which I just made up. It states clearly that: Computing and networking capacity available to average people stays at a perceived speed that is constant and annoyingly slow, leading to the necessary motivation to perpetuate Moore’s Law.
For all of the increased speed and capacity that we enjoy, we still call computers and our network connections slow. To illustrate my point, let me provide a quote from yours truly in 1990. It isn’t a direct quote, but I almost certainly said something close to it:
“I got my 14.4kbps Supra modem about 3 months ago. It’s fine, but it usually only connects at 9600 baud, which makes downloading Amiga shareware a bit slower than I’d like.”
Notice that I got a new piece of technology only three months prior. I’m kind of annoyed by it because it’s a bit slower than I expected. These are the key elements of Starks’ Law.
Another illustration, quoting me 20 years into the future:
“My new terabit Internet connection is nice, except that I can’t download 3D, 4K high-dynamic range uncompressed movies in real time. I still have to buffer them for 20 minutes or so. Also, I miss my Amiga.”
The last part was purely for flair, but you take my point.
Today, I sometimes catch myself watching a progress bar as I download things from the Internet. I might be watching iTunes grab a movie and every time the size of an old floppy disk passes, I’ll mutter, “disk.” An entire floppy passes by every 2-3 second on a so-so Internet connection. Speeds and capacities have increased by incomprehensible amounts in just 20 years. I simply would not have believed you had you told me, for example, that you could fit two entire terabytes of data on a hard disk exactly the same size as a then state of the art 40 megabyte hard drive of that time.
To be clear, I would not have believed you, after you explained what a terabyte was, since that word wasn’t even in my brain back then.
Starks’ Law points out that we never enjoy speed or capacity increases with technology. We only experience capability increases, which we don’t appreciate, except when we stop to think about them. Hard drives are just as full today as they were 20 years ago. Our computers boot at about the same speed and it takes about the same amount of time to load applications as it did back then. It is only that we are doing exponentially more with our technology.
[BTW: I'm fully aware that someone has probably already thought of this and named it after themselves. Feel free to point that out to me, but for now, I feel pretty smart.]
[BTW2: Crap. Wirth's Law is pretty close.]
[BTW3: Crap. Parkinson's Law is even closer.]
Computers and the Internet Will Always Be Slow: A Case For Starks’ Law
If you’re a nerd, you know Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors that can cheaply be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 2 years. Gordon Moore, in his 1965 paper, was more right than he knew. It turns out that his law would become a predictor for not only the number of transistors, but also processor speed, memory capacity, computer system speed, mega pixels in digital cameras and a whole host of other high technology milestones. Moore was predicting that technology gets faster at an exponential rate and would continue to do so until something fundamentally changed.
Butter’s Law, based on Moore’s, says that fiber optic density is doubling at the even faster rate of every 9 months. That means that the fiber tubes (thanks Ted Stevens) in the ground right now can pack double the data every nine months! Wow.
Which leads me to Starks’ Law, which I just made up. It states clearly that: Computing and networking capacity available to average people stays at a perceived speed that is constant and annoyingly slow, leading to the necessary motivation to perpetuate Moore’s Law.
For all of the increased speed and capacity that we enjoy, we still call computers and our network connections slow. To illustrate my point, let me provide a quote from yours truly in 1990. It isn’t a direct quote, but I almost certainly said something close to it:
“I got my 14.4kbps Supra modem about 3 months ago. It’s fine, but it usually only connects at 9600 baud, which makes downloading Amiga shareware a bit slower than I’d like.”
Notice that I got a new piece of technology only three months prior. I’m kind of annoyed by it because it’s a bit slower than I expected. These are the key elements of Starks’ Law.
Another illustration, quoting me 20 years into the future:
“My new terabit Internet connection is nice, except that I can’t download 3D, 4K high-dynamic range uncompressed movies in real time. I still have to buffer them for 20 minutes or so. Also, I miss my Amiga.”
The last part was purely for flair, but you take my point.
Today, I sometimes catch myself watching a progress bar as I download things from the Internet. I might be watching iTunes grab a movie and every time the size of an old floppy disk passes, I’ll mutter, “disk.” An entire floppy passes by every 2-3 second on a so-so Internet connection. Speeds and capacities have increased by incomprehensible amounts in just 20 years. I simply would not have believed you had you told me, for example, that you could fit two entire terabytes of data on a hard disk exactly the same size as a then state of the art 40 megabyte hard drive of that time.
To be clear, I would not have believed you, after you explained what a terabyte was, since that word wasn’t even in my brain back then.
Starks’ Law points out that we never enjoy speed or capacity increases with technology. We only experience capability increases, which we don’t appreciate, except when we stop to think about them. Hard drives are just as full today as they were 20 years ago. Our computers boot at about the same speed and it takes about the same amount of time to load applications as it did back then. It is only that we are doing exponentially more with our technology.
[BTW: I'm fully aware that someone has probably already thought of this and named it after themselves. Feel free to point that out to me, but for now, I feel pretty smart.]
[BTW2: Crap. Wirth's Law is pretty close.]
[BTW3: Crap. Parkinson's Law is even closer.]