Arnold Kling

Moore's Law and Wireless

Arnold Kling, Great Questions of Economics
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In this column, I talk about Moore's Law and its implications for shared-spectrum wireless.

Moore's Law is the most powerful economic discovery since compound interest...

The way I see it, Moore's Law ultimately will favor shared-spectrum wireless as the solution for last mile connectivity. Today, I am typing this out on my porch, using a laptop that connects wirelessly to a router in my basement, which in turn connects to the local phone company by DSL. My prediction is that eventually I will skip the DSL part, and instead my wireless connection will go to a local wireless network of some sort, and then ultimately to a transmitter on the Internet backbone. The communication network will have a fiber skeleton and a wireless skin. Telephone land lines will be superfluous.

Discussion Question. Most economic measures only double after decades. Moore's Law sasy that computer processing capability doubles in less than two years. What does this imply for the trend of the share of computer processing in economic output?

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