Moore's Curse

A paragraph to ponder from IEEE and the brilliant Vaclav Smil (link to the article):

"Energy, material, and transportation fundamentals that enable the functioning of modern civilization and that circumscribe its scope of action are improving steadily but slowly. Gains in performance range mostly from 1.5 to 3 percent a year, as do the declines in cost. Outside the microchip-dominated world, innovation simply does not obey Moore’s Law, proceeding at rates that are lower by an order of magnitude."