Human beings tend to take incremental change in stride. For example, the loaf of bread that was 50 cents a few decades ago that now costs $3 isn’t a big deal to us because the price rose gradually and steadily year by year. What we aren’t adapted for is exponential change. Which explains why we tend to be taken by surprise by developments that involve digital technologies, where order-of-magnitude improvements, driven by Moore’s Law, occur continuously. 

I thought about this reality earlier this summer when I visited the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which is located on top of a hill overlooking Boulder, Colo., and is one of the world’s leading sites for the study of weather prediction and climate modeling. To support its work, which is often based on complex mathematical models, the NCAR has long been a pioneer in the use of advanced computer systems. In fact, a plaque on a wall at the center indicates that in 1976, it had purchased the world’s first production Cray-1A supercomputer (for $8.9 million, the equivalent of $38 million today). Over the next 25 years, the NCAR continued to perform scientific research on later generations of Crays.

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