Universality of accelerating change

Iddo Eliazar and Michael F. Shlesinger

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018, vol. 494, issue C, 430-445

Abstract: On large time scales the progress of human technology follows an exponential growth trend that is termed accelerating change. The exponential growth trend is commonly considered to be the amalgamated effect of consecutive technology revolutions – where the progress carried in by each technology revolution follows an S-curve, and where the aging of each technology revolution drives humanity to push for the next technology revolution. Thus, as a collective, mankind is the ‘intelligent designer’ of accelerating change. In this paper we establish that the exponential growth trend – and only this trend – emerges universally, on large time scales, from systems that combine together two elements: randomness and amalgamation. Hence, the universal generation of accelerating change can be attained by systems with no ‘intelligent designer’.

Keywords: Exponential trends; Universality; Invariance; Poisson processes; Zipf law; Gompertz law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:494:y:2018:i:c:p:430-445

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2017.12.021

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