It presents us with dazzling challenges when we find the result that plants grow according to the e function. For us, the pond was “suddenly” overgrown with algae.
Even rulers and kings have failed miserably in this trap. According to legend, King Shihram granted the chess teacher Sissa a free wish. He wanted a grain of rice on the first square, two grains of rice on the second square, 4 grains of rice on the third square, and so on. The king should have given him 18 trillion grains of rice.
We have exactly the same phenomenon with technical progress. Until the year 2000, professions were still being taught, which were completely overtaken by technical progress after a few years. This refers, for example, to the profession of technical draftsman.
The same phenomenon was also experienced about 100 years earlier with assembly line production. The assembly line and the massive hiring of staff resulted in an exponential output of vehicles by Henry Ford, as the effects mutually reinforced each other. The downside at the time was that many didn’t believe in this progress because they couldn’t imagine it. They therefore continued to believe in horses and learned professions that were doomed to fail within a very short time. The result was prosperity for some people and impoverishment for a larger majority. If you want to read more about this trap, you can read the following book: “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology“, ISBN 978-0670033843. Here it is well presented which technical developments are exponential and it is clearly shown that the only way to be more conceivable in the field is through a regression study.
“The hard mathematical problem underlying ECDSA is the discrete logarithm problem, which Shor’s algorithm can solve on a quantum computer in n3log(n)loglog(n) time, which is of O(n3) complexity.” [ISBN 978-3-031-04612-4 page 274]
That sounds like we’re decades away to benefit from the performance boostup by a quantum computer. But think about the examples upstairs and how the majority has succumbed to their own imagination.
With regard to the quantum computer, it looks more like there would be technical solutions to dimension the quantum computer to an unlimited extent. IBM wants to do that in less than five years, see youtube video.
Anyone who wants to prepare for the quantum age should do so now. Blockchain, cryptography in general and artificial intelligence are strongly influenced by the new technical possibilities. These can become reality faster than we can imagine.