The Next Really Big Enormous Thing...

The universe appeared and started expanding. Life appeared somewhere and then on Earth began making larger and smarter animals. Humans appeared and became smarter and more numerous, by inventing language, farming, industry, and computers.

These events are not evenly distributed over the history of the universe. The first events are relatively evenly distributed: the universe started fourteen billion years ago, life appeared by four billion years ago, and on Earth animals started growing larger and smarter about half a billion years ago. But the other events are very recent: our species appeared two million years ago, farming started ten thousand years ago, industry started two hundred years ago, and computers started a few decades ago.

Economists best estimates of total world product (average wealth per person times the number of people) show it to have been growing exponentially over the last century, doubling about every fifteen years, or about sixty times faster than under farming.

A new growth mode should arise sometime within about the next seven industry mode doublings (i.e., the next seventy years) and give a new wealth doubling time of between seven and sixteen days. Such a new mode would surely count as "The Next Really Big Enormous Thing."

The transition from farming to industry seems to have been more gradual than the transition from hunting to farming. Even such a gradual transition, however, would be very dramatic. Assume that a new transition was as gradual as the one to industry, and that the world economic growth rate was six percent in both 2039 and 2040, plus or minus a typical yearly fluctuation of half a percent.

If so, then in 2041, the increase in the growth rate might be the size of a typical fluctuation, and then in 2042 the growth rate would be a noticeably different eight percent. Growth would then be 14% in 2043, 50% in 2044, 150% in 2045, and 500% in 2046. Within five years the change would go from barely noticeable to overwhelming.