Speed
The word speed is derived from the Middle English spede (good luck), which in turn originated from older roots meaning to prosper or succeed. In its contemporary usage, speed refers to a rate of change. It commonly denotes the time it takes to travel a certain distance (e.g., a rate of 60 miles per hour), but it is also used to describe the time needed to perform certain tasks or operations, especially in information processing (e.g., a computer with a 500-megahertz processing speed). Individual artifacts such as cars, airplanes, and computers are achieving ever-greater speeds, which has effectively decreased and in some cases nearly eliminated distance. The speed of modern travel and communication has shrunk the world and radically altered the experience of time and place for individuals, corporations, and nations. Increased speed at this level of analysis presents several important safety and ethical issues.
The Technological Singularity and Other Analyses
But even more profound implications derive from the speed at which the very processes of technological innovation and knowledge creation occur. Moore's law (holding that growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit will be exponential) was generalized to all technologies by Raymond Kurzweil in his "law of accelerating returns." Some futurologists claim that this acceleration will lead to a "technological singularity." This denotes the point in the development of a civilization at which technological change accelerates beyond the ability of present-day humans to fully comprehend, guide, predict, or control it.
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