The 4 digtal laws
I recently read a great post by amazing folks at Digital Tonto talking about the 3 fundamental laws of digital technology and a 4th that has nothing to do with technology. The laws are:
1. Kryder’s law which states that storage capacity doubles every year
2. Moore’s law which states that processor speed doubles every 18-24 months
3. Nielsen’s law which states that bandwidth will double every 2 years (in practice, longer)
The fourth law is what they call the Caveman Law. This article doesn’t have a great explanation of it, but in my opinion, it states that no matter how big or powerful the technology is, if it can’t fullfil a person’s primitive desires, it’s useless.
The article goes on to eulogize Steve Jobs, but this is one of the few I agree with. Apple rarely talks about the first three laws. When they launch a product, you don’t often see specs on processor speed or storage. It’s all about how it fulfills your desires. Apple did a lot of things right, but this is probably the most important.
