>> it would be extremely surprising if these improvements suddenly stopped.
> But a lot of technologies turn out to be S-shaped, not purely exponential, because there are limiting factors.
An S-curve is exactly the opposite of "suddenly" stopping.
It is possible for us to get a sudden stop, due to limiting factors.
For a hypothetical: if Moore's Law had continued until we hit atomic resolution instead of the slowdown as we got close to it, that would have been an example of a sudden stop: can't get transistors smaller than atoms, but yet it would have been possible (with arbitrarily large investments that we didn't have) to halve transistor sizes every 18 months until suddenly we can't.
Now I think about it, the speed of commercial airlines is also an example of a sudden stop: we had to solve sonic booms first before even considering a Concorde replacement.
> But a lot of technologies turn out to be S-shaped, not purely exponential, because there are limiting factors.
An S-curve is exactly the opposite of "suddenly" stopping.
It is possible for us to get a sudden stop, due to limiting factors.
For a hypothetical: if Moore's Law had continued until we hit atomic resolution instead of the slowdown as we got close to it, that would have been an example of a sudden stop: can't get transistors smaller than atoms, but yet it would have been possible (with arbitrarily large investments that we didn't have) to halve transistor sizes every 18 months until suddenly we can't.
Now I think about it, the speed of commercial airlines is also an example of a sudden stop: we had to solve sonic booms first before even considering a Concorde replacement.