With Moore’s law seeming to reach its natural/physical limit, gains in computing power are now coming mostly from stringing chips together, and from chip specialisation (Marc Andreessen discusses this here). Similarly, as the knowledge that any one person or small group of people can accumulate hits a natural limit, the number of scientific papers authored by more than 1000 people is exploding.
For me, the story of the 2020s will not be one of pure accumulation of processing power or knowledge. It will be how we’re able (or not able) to manage and optimise the connections between billions and trillions of nodes, whether human, computer or otherwise. Stay tuned.