Hello fellow educators, welcome to podcast #152. We are two days away from the fulfillment of a vision that I believe was inspired by the Holy Spirit. On Thursday we will begin the pre-conference to The Vancouver Symposium on Christian Education for the 21^st Century. We will be meeting with 80 plus Christian leaders from as far away as Russia, South Africa, Malaysia, Australia, our neighbours to the South and Canadians from across our nation. This is year one of three events that will create dialogue and vision for the Christian School movement. The three year goal of these meetings will be to vision and direction to the global Christian School movement. This will culminate in a pedagogical manifesto for Christian Education in the 21^st Century that will be completed in the summer of 2013. Our visionary target date is 2025. This will be the year that the kindergarten class of 2013 will be graduating. My granddaughter starts kindergarten that year. And yet, this date seems so far off. One reason for this is intensity of change that the Digital World has thrust upon us. The momentum of change is so mind numbing that it is very difficult to visualize what the world will be like in 2025. But visualize we must, because my granddaughter and your children and students will be given a diploma from our institutions that very year and we must ask the question, will we be able to equip them for their journey into this uncertain future. That’s why every teacher must become a futurist. This will be part of the content of my opening challenge to this prodigious gathering of educators.  I will be setting the stage of the world we find ourselves educating and discipling in. In my book Discipling this Generation for a Digital World I included a very important chapter entitled the Doubling where I speak about the exponential curve in which technology is driving change.  In preparation for the Symposium I want to bring this chapter from the audio version of my book to you in today’s podcast:

I hope that this both inspires you and warns you about the world we will be giving our children in 2025. We are filming and recording this historic event in Vancouver and I hope to carry it on the Christian Educator in the weeks to come. Like always I thrive on your comments. Perhaps I could hear from someone who has never emailed a comment this week. Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and tell how you liked or didn’t like the podcast. Thank you for listening and thank you for the part you play in discipleship-based Christian Education.

The Digital Future “Technological Progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” Albert Einstein, Letter to a friend, 1917

The Doubling “…Most important principal - exponential thinking.”  Rick Warren, Author of the Purpose Driven Life

                In a land far away there lived a wealthy king. He was strict with his subjects and exacted very high taxes, but he was honest in his judgment and his word was always true. His son became ill and all of the kingdom’s physicians were unable to find a cure. Word was sent throughout the kingdom that if anyone found a cure the king would reward that subject handsomely, up to one quarter of his kingdom.

                One of the peasants who worked in the castle helping the chief steward with the castle bookkeeping noticed that the food being prepared for the son contained walnuts and he himself had often become ill while eating these nuts. He told the chef to stop using the nuts and in two days, the boy was well. When the king found out who had brought forth the wise council, he called the peasant bean counter to his chambers.

                The king was beside himself when he announced, “You have saved my son and, more importantly, the heir to my wealth and kingdom.” The king continued, “Up to one quarter of my kingdom is at your disposal; what shall I grant you?”

                The peasant replied in a very humble manner, “Great king, you are fair and your word is always sure. I will only ask for a humble portion.” He knew exactly how to stroke the king’s ego, “I ask for a simple thing: that I might feed my son and provide for his needs. Would you, oh great king, please observe that I have brought a chess board to your chambers.”

                The peasant pointed to the corner and sure enough, there was the board. He brought it before the king and continued, “I humbly ask that you would place one bean on the next square of the board each day and have it delivered to my home and storehouse.” He paused for effect as he placed a bean on the corner square.

                “Is that all you ask?” inquired the king with a puz-zled look.

                “One more detail, your majesty,” replied the peas-ant. “You are a great and mighty king; would you also double the beans each day so that I receive twice the amount from the day before? I beg the king and his court’s indulgence on this matter.” The peasant looked timidly around the chambers and continued. “Today I am given one bean and tomorrow, two, the next day, four and the next day, eight, until the entire board is full.”

                The king looked at his chief assistant who was shaking his head with a bewildered look. He advised, “I think this will more than adequately requite the gentleman, sire.”

                The king turned and pronounced, “Let it be so. As I give my oath and kingdom, so you shall be rewarded with the beans.” He paused the way kings do in such officious pronouncements, “Ah, we shall call it: The Doubling.”

                Papers were prepared and documents signed. The king’s word was law.

                Each day the chief was ordered to come and add the beans. A royal courier was assigned to deliver the beans. Each day brought new banter in the chambers. Even on day ten when the tired chief brought out the 512 beans for delivery, the court broke out in laughter. Some shouted, “Perhaps the peasant can make his son bean soup today!”

                Nobody had any idea what to expect in the coming weeks. On day fourteen, they had their first crisis. The chief could not find enough beans in the palace storehouse to provide the 8,192 beans. For the first time, two weeks into the agreement, the chief wondered what he would do tomorrow.

                Over the next few days, the king’s steward solved the problem by taxing the kingdom’s subjects beans instead of money. Everyone happily handed over their supply. By the third week the crisis returned. On this day, the king’s servants delivered 1,048,576 beans. The king himself was desperately worried about keeping his word. He sent ships and armies out to find every bean within two weeks’ distance of the kingdom. He began to glimpse his fate.

                All was lost on day thirty when the king could not provide the 536,870,912 beans. Realizing that he still had thirty-four squares of the chessboard remaining, he sum-moned the peasant.

                With as much dignity that he could muster, the king said, “I have failed in my oath. I have forsworn my kingdom. I am in your hands”

                “Indeed you are,” retorted the former peasant. “I will have your entire kingdom. I will have all of your goods and I will have your crown.”

                The honest king had no choice. He relinquished his crown, stepped aside and left the kingdom. Rumor has it that he started a bean farm.

Exponential “Doubling” or Back to Moore’s Law

                In 2002 the twenty-seventh doubling of the computer chip occurred.  The billion-transistor DRAM chip came rolling off the Intel assembly line.

Remember Moore’s Law - Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of the technology giant, Intel? More than half of all computer chips in the world come from his company. “Moore’s law” is based on the amount of transistors that can be put on a computer chip at relatively the same size and cost. Every two years, or more precisely, every eighteen months, computer power has continued to double since 1962. This is known as an exponential curve.

                This means that computer chips will be able to hold eight-billion transistors by 2008. When will it slow down?      The curve began back in 1826, when Joseph Henry sent digital signals to his schoolboys in the next room. The first double was in about 1840, when Henry Morris created his code and stole a few patents. In 1868, the transcontinental telegraph cable was laid; double number three, and on through the next century with an invention here and an innovation there; double, double, double, double. In the 1920s and 30s we see doubling in the inventions of radio and television; double. In the 40s, the first digital computers were used; double. Alan Turning’s theories of digital computing resulted in scientists all over the world considering ways that they too could create computers.  Pick it up again in the 1950s, when the properties of silicon were discovered—double. Here the exponential curve began to really take off and double quicker. IBM began to build the first true “Supercomputer” called the 7000 series mainframe—double. IBM began using disks to store data—double. The first true transistor-based computers were made public in 1960—double. In 1964, a much smaller machine is launched for mid-sized laboratories—double. In the mid-sixties, the microprocessor hit the scene—double. Throughout the seventies, we saw the innovation of microcomputers being invented and programmed by guys in their garage—double. Tandy comes out with a desktop computer that has a processor working at 16 kilobytes a second—double. The 8086 processor was invented in the early eighties and more IBM computers became available for about $10,000 a machine—double. Apple launched the Macintosh desktop PC with their famous super-bowl ad—double. In 1986 the Intel introduced the 286 microprocessor chip—double. In 1988 the 386; double. In 1991, the 486—double. Then we saw the Pentiums I, II, III—double—double—double . At the turn of the millennium, the Pentium IVs—double. Since we started using the IV, they have doubled three times. As soon as you buy a computer, no matter how powerful it is, its shelf life for resale is about four months—double. As you can plainly see everything is doubling much quicker. The exponential curve is climbing very quickly right now.

                Thankfully, what is not doubling is all of the support technology necessary for the transistor-laden chip. Motherboards and other hardware components are still catching up to the processor chip. Contrary to what Microsoft and Adobe want you to believe, software is not doubling every two years. Software is the way we take advantage of the computer and make it do what we want. Software is also on an exponential curve but is only doubling about every five years at this point.

                Other technologies and innovations have gone through doubling growth spurts but not so consistently and for such a prolonged period. The railroads doubled through the mid-nineteenth century but began to slow when there were no more places to go. Joel Garreau writes about this in his chapter entitled The Curve.

“This astonishing power has become almost free be-cause, unlike the railroads, its expansion does not have the material limits of, say, Grand Central Sta-tion. The cost of shipping a ton of grain was halved perhaps three times during the railroads’ heyday. The cost of computing had halved almost 30 times by the early 21st Century. There are only four limits to computer evolution: quantum physics, human ingenuity, the market and our will. Actually, it’s not at all clear that there are any practical limits represented by quantum physics, human ingenuity and the market, at least not in our lifetimes.”

                Don’t forget our little tale at the beginning of this chapter. On day 30, the king had to surrender his throne. Today is day 29 in computing. Doubling the processor power of today’s computer means a heck-of-a-lot more than the doubling of the IBM monster computer called Deep Blue. This is the computer that beat world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, in 1997. It was upgraded after its 1996 loss against Kasparov. Capable of evaluating 200,000,000 positions per second, it was now twice as fast as the 1996 version.  Compare this with today’s monster supercomputer, Blue Gene. It has 1000 times more processing power than its ancestor, Deep Blue. In order to describe how fast and how much it can do, we are making up words such as “teraFLOPS” and “petaFLOPS.”  I won’t even try to define these terms. Let’s just say they are really, really big numbers. Okay, I cannot resist: FLOPS are known as Floating point Operations Per Second. A gigaFLOP is a billion FLOPS. Pentium 4 computers can perform at several GFLOPS. TeraFLOPS are a trillion flops and petaFLOPS are a thousand trillion (quadrillion) FLOPS. The first pe-taFLOPS-capable computer will be rolling out sometime by the end of this year. As I said before, really, really big numbers.

Nanotechnology – Smaller is Bigger

                One of the main reasons why computers can continue to double is that for computers to advance, they must grow smaller instead of bigger. Remember that one of the measures for doubling is how many transistors can be placed on a microprocessor chip. Obviously, the smaller we can make these transistors, the more we can get on a chip.

                Nanotechnology is a term for creating technology at the very smallest of sizes. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. By comparison, the average sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick. Here is how the National Nanotechnology Initiative website defines it:

                “Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Encompassing nanoscale science, engineering and technology, nanotechnology involves imaging, measuring, modeling, and manipulating matter at this length scale.

                “At the nanoscale, the physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials differ in fundamental and valuable ways from the properties of individual atoms and molecules or bulk matter. Nanotechnology R&D is directed toward understanding and creating improved materials, devices, and systems that exploit these new properties.”

                Nanotechnology is finding its way into commercial products. If you use certain sunscreen or cosmetics, water filtration, sunglasses or even tennis rackets, then it is possible your product has been developed with nanotechnology. Wal-Mart will soon be using nano-identifiers to track their products. Sprinkle on a little nano-dust, pass it under a scanner and they can track what you buy.

                Nanotechnology research is huge in the medical industry and pharmaceuticals. This new field is called Biomolecular Nanotechnology, or in other words, working at the molecular level of biology. Scientists are experimenting with miniature robots that can attach themselves to a cell in the body and administer medicine or surgically alter the cell. Beyond this, they will be able to manipulate a DNA molecule by sending a specific nano-agent that will find a particular gene and remove or alter it.

                In a paper published for the annual review of Bio-medical Engineering, the scientists at the research center for Bio-Nano Robotics at Northeastern University explain the breakthrough work they are doing.

                Mother Nature has her own set of molecular ma-chines that have been working for centuries and have become optimized for performance and design over the ages. As our knowledge and understanding of these numerous machines continues to increase, we now see a possibility of using the natural machines, or creating synthetic ones from scratch, by mimicking nature… The ever-increasing computing power makes it possible to dynamically model protein folding processes and predict the conformations and structure of lesser known proteins. These findings help unravel the mysteries associated with the molecular machinery and pave the way for the production and application of these miniature machines in various fields, including medicine, space exploration, electronics and military.

                “The ever-increasing computing power makes it possible…”—double.

Computer Doubling will Double Almost Everything

                 Gordon Moore has since revised his predictions and indicates that computer technology doubling will start to slow down by 2016 when the microchip circuitry is working at 1 to 100 nanometers.  Essentially this is as small as the most minute molecule. It means we will build computers out of circuitry two and half times smaller than the DNA Molecule.  Intel recently announced they have produced transistors of which its smallest features are 90 nanometers wide.

                Joel Garreau shows how the computer’s doubling is affecting other areas outside of the microchip:

                “Meanwhile, the amount of computer memory you can get for a dollar is doubling every 15 months. The cost-performance ratio of Internet service providers is doubling every 12 months… Internet backbone bandwidth is doubling every 12 months. The size of the Internet is doubling every 12 months. In short, the number of other curves of accelerated change unleashed by Moore’s Law have themselves begun to proliferate exponentially.

                “Human genes mapped per year—doubling time, 18 months. Resolution of brain-scanning devices—doubling time, 12 months. Growth in personal and service robots—doubling time, 9 months.” 

                The Barna Group has reported doublings in the use of technology and the internet among Christians.

                Where will this all lead to? How much doubling can we sustain until something extremely dramatic happens - if it hasn’t already! The French are trying to help their children understand what is happening.

                “French children are told a story in which you imagine having a pond with water lily leaves float-ing on the surface. The lily doubles in size every day and if left unchecked will smother the pond in 30 days, killing all the other living things in the water. Day after day the plant seems small and so you decide to leave it grow until it half-covers the pond, before cutting it back. On what day will that occur? The 29th day, and then you will have just one day to save the pond.”

                It is day 29 in computing doubling. Something is going to happen soon. According to our French tale, today is the last day to do something about it.

I hope that this both inspires you and warns you about the world we will be giving our children in 2025. We are filming and recording this historic event in Vancouver and I hope to carry it on the Christian Educator in the weeks to come. Like always I thrive on your comments. Perhaps I could hear from someone who has never emailed a comment this week. Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and tell how you liked or didn’t like the podcast. Thank you for listening and thank you for the part you play in discipleship-based Christian Education.