A Ray Kurzweil-style infographic illustrating the law of accelerating returns and the path toward the technological singularity.

A detailed infographic showing the exponential growth of computing power from 1900 to 2045, highlighting key milestones like the Analytical Engine, Apple II, and Power Mac G4, and predicting that computers will surpass the combined brainpower of all humans by 2045.

1 The accelerating pace of change ... Agricultural Revolution -> 8,000 years -> Industrial Revolution -> 120 years -> Light bulb -> 90 years -> Moon landing -> 22 years -> World Wide Web -> 9 years -> Human genome sequenced 2 ... and exponential growth in computing power ... Computer technology, shown here climbing dramatically by powers of 10, is now progressing more each hour than it did in its entire first 90 years COMPUTER RANKINGS By calculations per second per $1,000 Analytical engine Never fully built, Charles Babbage's invention was designed to solve computational and logical problems Colossus The electronic computer, with 1,500 vacuum tubes, helped the British crack German codes during WW II UNIVAC I The first commercially marketed computer, used to tabulate the U.S. Census, occupied 943 cu. ft. Apple II At a price of $1,298, the compact machine was one of the first massively popular personal computers Power Mac G4 The first personal computer to deliver more than 1 billion floating-point operations per second 3 ... will lead to the Singularity 2045 Surpasses brainpower equivalent to that of all human brains combined Surpasses brainpower of human in 2023 Surpasses brainpower of mouse in 2015 Source: Time Magazine ELECTROMECHANICAL - RELAYS - VACUUM TUBES - TRANSISTORS - INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2011 2020 2045