Flaw and Order

Dr. Dobb's Journal August 2001

If the law supposes that, the law is a ass — a idiot. — Charles Dickens

On May 25 of this year, semiconductor legend Gordon Moore announced he would step down from the board of directors of Intel. The most far-reaching effect of this decision is the immediate repeal of Moore's Law, which Moore formulated back in 1965, and which stated that the number of transistors that could be packed into an integrated circuit would double every year (later revised to every year-and-a-half to two years). The implication of the repeal of Moore's Law for society, technological progress, stock market, and chairmanships of key Senate committees has yet to be assessed.

Moore is not just going fishing, though. He has set up a $10 billion fund that will back some interesting scientific and environmental efforts. Based on these interests of Moore's, I predict we will shortly see some new Moore's Laws.

• Moore's Law of Species Extinction. Every two years, the number of species on the Earth will halve. If we work really hard on genetic engineering and develop the ability for humans to extract necessary nutrients from sterile rock and solve the oxygen problem that we'll face when the last plant is gone and reengineer the human digestive system so that it doesn't require the presence of all those microorganisms, we should be able to get the species count down to one. Beyond that, Moore's Law of Species Extinction may not hold precisely.
• Moore's Law of Distributed Computing. Every two years, the number of people involved in the SETIonline project will double. SETI stands for "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence," and the project uses spare CPU cycles to crunch data from space for anomalies that could indicate intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Eventually, every person on Earth will be giving all the spare cycles in all their computers and game machines and embedded processors to SETIonline, and then in order for Moore's Law of Distributed Computing to continue to hold, we'll have to get the aliens involved.
• Moore's Law of College Enrollment. Enrollment in the engineering programs at Stanford, Cal Tech, and MIT will double every two years. In the fall of 2013, one million freshmen will enroll in engineering at Stanford, packing the hills all the way up to Woodside to a density more reminiscent of Bangladesh than Palo Alto. In 2017, when they all go back to their home countries, four million new students will replace them.

Other popular laws have also been repealed in recent years, often with less fanfare than Moore's Law. I don't know why it is, but in publishing and in government, retractions never get the same coverage as the thing retracted. But as a service to DDJ readers, I'll clarify the status of these recently retracted or redacted or repealed or otherwise tweaked laws.

• Grosch's Law. This states that computing power is proportional to the square of system cost. This law (P=kC**2) was shown to be valid for an extreme value of C by the free-computer phenomenon of some months ago, although it has been pointed out that "free" there referred to price rather than cost. GroschÕs Law failed badly, however, in a recent experiment in which an ISV was actually paid to use a particular vendor's defective parts, resulting in a negative system cost, but the negative value for C failed to generate, when squared, a positive value for P.
• The Law of Evolution by Natural Selection. Amended. It is now the Law of Evolution by Self-Selection through the Drinking of Poisoned Kool-Aid or Going off to Join the Aliens in the Tail of the Comet.
• The Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. Rescinded by Executive Order, President William Jefferson Clinton. Spin can now be infinite.
• Foster's Law. Flouted. This law, which says that all Australians in the media must maintain the image of beer-swilling male chauvinist pigs, was blatantly flouted by "Xena, Warrior Princess" star Lucy Lawless. Well of course she would.
• The Law of Large Numbers. Still in effect, but made more accessible to the general public by defining "large" to mean 6. Interested readers can find more details in the forthcoming "Dummies Guide to Large Numbers."
• Newton's Third Law of Motion. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Status uncertain. Currently under test by Senator James Jeffords of Vermont.
• The Law of the Excluded Middle. Status uncertain. Also currently under test by Senator James Jeffords of Vermont.

Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mike@swaine.com