"Our dialogue focuses on the continuous development of science and technology and the changes it has brought to human life. These developments and changes seem to have brought mankind to a stage that can be called a singular point in human history. After this stage, human society and life style cannot continue. "
Hawking believes that the irreversible paradigm shift in the world is taking place with higher frequency and faster speed. Hawking pointed out, for example, that the time from the discovery of modern algebra to the invention of computers is much less than that from the invention of words to the discovery of modern mathematics.
Ray Kurzweil's analysis of the history of science and technology led him to the conclusion that the growth of science and technology was in a geometric series, which he called "the law of accelerated regression". This law extends Moore's law to many scientific and technological fields other than integrated circuit technology.
Ray kurzweil believes that with the acceleration of paradigm shift, computers develop in geometric progression, from punching mechanical computers to electromagnetic relay computers, to vacuum tube computers, to transistor computers, to early integrated circuit computers, and then to modern VLSI computers, the time required for computer design and technology paradigm shift is getting shorter and shorter, which is Moore's Law.
It is worth noting that Li Siguang, a Chinese scientist, reached a conclusion about the accelerated development of human beings similar to that of von Neumann at almost the same time. Li Siguang wrote in his paper "The Emergence of Man":
"The development of human culture entered the Neolithic Age and the Metal Age after the late Paleolithic Age. Later, it developed faster and faster. It's not more than 10,000 years since the Neolithic Age, and it's only a few thousand years since the metal age. It's only a hundred years since people began to use electric energy, and the use of atomic energy has only been in recent decades. The development stage before the Neolithic Age is often counted from hundreds of thousands of years to millions of years. It can be seen that human development is not a constant-speed movement, but an accelerated movement, that is, the later progress, the more times the speed increases. "