The writer, author of ‘The Technology Trap’, is the Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford university
We have often been told that the great inventions of the past cannot be repeated, and that we have already eaten all the low-hanging fruit. And yet, time and time again, scientific progress has allowed us to pluck the fatter, juicier crop from higher branches.
The trouble is that while research inputs have been rising sharply, research productivity is dropping even faster. It now takes 18 times the number of researchers to achieve Moore’s law — that is, the doubling of computer chip power about every two years — than in the early 1970s.
您已阅读14%（651字），剩余86%（3916字）包含更多重要信息，订阅以继续探索完整内容，并享受更多专属服务。