Exponential ideas
Many people in tech are obsessed with exponential growth. But I wonder…
Are things which look like exponential growth always the spread of an idea between humans? Are they always ideas whose implementation can be easily parallelized or distributed, so that as the idea spreads, the growth of its implementation is not bottlenecked?
Where the growth of an idea was not exponential, was that because its implementation couldn’t proceed in a decentralised way? Was it because the material resources needed for its implementation weren’t already widely available, ready to be put to use?
Is the end of exponential growth (the top of the S curve) due to saturation of the idea among humans?