April 30 2008 / by juldrich
Category: Business & Work Year: General Rating: 2 Hot
By Jack Uldrich
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
As a result of my new book, I have been asked on a number of
occasions to describe what I mean by the title: “jump the curve.”
It is a fair question and when answering it I like to recall the
words of that old sage, Albert Einstein, who once said that if a
person – especially a scientist or technologist – couldn’t explain
what he or she was working on to an 8-year old child then that
person was either a fraud or a charlatan.
It’s an excellent test and because I have both an 8 year-old
daughter and a 6 year-old son, I decided to put the topic of my new
book to this test. Liking a challenge, I decided to see if my
youngest child could comprehend the idea of “jumping the
curve.”
Without using an example in the book, I asked my son, who has
yet to lose any of his teeth, whether he would rather receive a
single dollar for every one of his 20 baby teeth or if he would
instead prefer to receive a single cent for his first tooth and
then have that penny double for the next 19 teeth?
Being fairly good at numbers and knowing that his dad often
likes to trick him, my son selected the second option—the penny
doubling. (cont.)
“Smart boy,” I proudly said. “Now, what if the tooth fairy gave
you $5 per tooth?” (I was careful to suggest that I was not
implying that the tooth fairy would leave him $5.) He
pondered his options for a moment and, after calculating his total
would come to $100, he selected the $5 option.
I asked him if he was sure and he confidently shook his head in
the affirmative. “Well, son,” I replied, “I’m afraid that you have
lost out on over $10,000.”
The look on his face was one of incredulousness, and that is
precisely why I told him that he had to learn to “jump the curve.”
Here’s how the chart reads:
1st tooth: 1 cent
2nd tooth: 2 cents
3rd tooth: 4 cents
4th tooth: 8 cents
5th tooth: 16 cents
6th tooth: 32 cents
7th tooth: 64 cents
8th tooth: $1.28
9th tooth: $2.56
10th tooth: $5.12
11th tooth: $10.24
12th tooth: $20.48
13th tooth: $40.96
14th tooth: $81.92
15th tooth: $163.84
16th tooth: $327.68
17th tooth: $655.36
18th tooth: $1310.72
19th tooth: $2621.44
20th tooth: $5242.88
Total: $10,485.75 … or more than $500 per tooth!
To explain the concept of “jumping the curve,” I then drew him a
graph and said that before a person can profit from any exponential
trend he must first understand where that trend. The skill, I
noted, “could be as significant as the difference between getting
only $5 for a tooth or receiving $500.”
My broader point, of course, was that exponential advances are
occuring in a variety of fields, including information technology,
biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, brain scanning and even
knowledge itself; and if he wanted to position himself for the
future he would be wise to internalize this lesson now. The lesson
is so important, I’d argue, that it is almost better than free
money.
Interested in some other implausible ideas about the future?
Check some of these past posts by Jack:
Voiceless Communication: It’s Coming and It’ll Augment Human
Intelligence
The Robot Will See You
Now
Operate on Yourself
57 Years is Now 41 Days
Death’s Slow Death
Self-Driving Cars
Do the Impossible
Enlarge Our Minds to
a Space Elevator
Pong &
The Future of the President’s Brain
Could You Really Love a
Robot?
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