Moore's Law in Nano-Land

They don't teach Moore's Law in law school - well, they didn't used to - but it's a classic: the number of components you can cram on a single chip doubles every 24 months (some say 18 months). It's held true for over forty years, and roughly correlates to computer power. Very roughly, since your PC today crashes almost as often as last year's model.

Will Moore's Law ever peter out? After all, there is another law, called the law of diminishing returns. Thankfully, today comes news from IBM and HP that they are continuing advances in nano-computing, getting small clusters of atoms - and even individual atoms - to behave like little electronic components.

So, no end in sight for Moore's Law so far. Takes us one step closer to the day when lawyer-bots will read contracts and file lawsuits, while "wetware" lawyers can stay home and write blogs ...