[ArtWomb]

Well, I believe the meta-question here is: why aren't we experiencing Moore's Law rates of efficiency in all aspects of human life? Doubling in performance every two years or so. Even if pricing remains relatively constant. I think it's sort of the basis of "Progress Studies". Look to areas that have kept up with Moore's Law (such as GPUs) and try to work backwards. Competition, R&D spend, relentless focus on innovation in consumer products, global distribution and the willingness to foster talent required to achieve those relentless milestones. Seems to be lacking almost everywhere except computational architectures (and perhaps payloads to low earth orbit) ;)

[AnimalMuppet]

Silicon is pretty unique. Take crops, for example. There is no basis on which we could have a Moore's Law-like increase in soil productivity. We had the Green Revolution, but it was a one-off. There may be a second one waiting in the wings in the form of GMOs, but it's 50 years after the first one.

Why are crops so different from silicon? Because silicon was just a matter of doing the same thing at smaller and smaller scales. You can't improve plant yields by that kind of process.