Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology

by Azeem Azhar

But the greater cause of the newfound power of Wright’s Law lies in economics. Previously, the S-curve of demand tapered off when a market reached saturation. Today, that point of market saturation is much more distant – because global markets are so much larger. And this means that the process explained by Wright’s Law can continue for much longer, and the exponential gains can continue to mount up. As we’ll see time and again in this book, the rise of a global market for products is one of the great changes of the last 50 years. The volume of world trade increased 60-fold, from $318 billion to $19,468 billion by 2020. And this pushed us ever further down the path of Wright’s Law. Bigger markets mean more demand; more demand means more efficient production; more efficient production means cheaper goods; cheaper goods mean bigger markets. The cycle has an inherently exponential logic.