How Can You Count in These Exponential Times?

by Kate Greene

There’s this guy, Dörner
He makes a kind of computer program
To test our thinking
Turns out, we’re not so good
At the problem of exponential returns
We get at our answers in a more straightforward way
A to B rather than A to Battlestar Galactica
I pity the engineers who have found themselves on the upward slope
Of Moore’s law—livelihoods dependent
On the betterment of silicon every two years
And people in general
We’re all in this together
Our 7 billion now, revised ever larger, ever larger
Not too long ago we were so small in number
That if all of San Francisco’s residents were dispersed, it would have been the
world
Humanity scattered
And clumped
Imagine, would you, waking up on one of those mornings

Published on December 9, 2015