Chips With Everything

The cost of our tech will be rising, that much is for sure: stuff gets more expensive with time. But this year's rises may be disproportionately higher and the trend will probably continue as we move forward. The reason? Chips. And more specifically, memory and data storage chips. Ironically, aside from the geopolitical factors currently mashing up the markets with trade wars, actual wars and the inevitable knock-ons in the stock market, the principal factor is the thirst of big tech itself, specifically, A.I., which requires not only huge amounts of processing and co-processing power; it also consumes vast amounts of memory in the process of doing what it does. This 'ever-upwards' trend is not unique in the history of computer and communications device development, but the scale and rate of growth at which it's happening is. Cost inflation is being driven by configuration inflation, and dear old Moore's Law and the manufacturing base that supports the industry are struggling to keep up; hence the the increase in rate of price inflation. Of course this follows a general trend that fits within the aegis of human wish fulfilment and fear of missing out: we are told that our tech will do x, y and z more in the next product round and business cycle, and FOMO ensures that most follow the crowd on this notionally continuous upgrade path. But just like continuous economic growth, endless tech upgradability is essentially mythical and itself bounded not only by physics and economics itself, but by the constraints of planetary resources and energy supply. Throw in the madcap politics of the twenty-first century thus far, and we are fast approaching the point of stalling our collective aircraft in its flight: and that, even crudely metaphorically, does not bode well for all of us on board...