The 6 D’s along the Exponential Curve

Technology is advancing but it has to start at zero and move from there. The Exponential technologies that are in the mainstream right now are all many years into their development and we are only seeing them in the mainstream now because they have moved out of the deceptive phase.  The graph below depicts the 6 D’s that you find along the exponential curve. Peter Diamandis from Singularity University put together the 6 D’s as a way of showing people what to expect when it comes to Exponential technology.

The six D’s are unpacked further below:

Digitized | Initial stage where digitalization of physical processes takes place. Many services have already been digitised and at the moment thanks to Blockchain technology even more is being digitized.

Deception | It takes a while to get up to speed. People often loose hope at this stage as it seems that the technology is not taking off. Virtual Reality was in this deceptive phase during the 2000’s, as was 3D printing a technology that is over 30 years old. Use of blockchain and smart contracts is in this stage right now.

Disruptive | This is when the technology starts make a real difference as the exponential doublings are significant. For the digital camera when the quality was 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.6 this was not disruptive but when it reached 3.2 megapixels this essentially killed film.

Demonetization | This occurs when money is taken out of the equation. The reduction of fees due to technology use is partial demonetization although the complete elimination of cost that digital photography brought about is a good example. With film camera’s there was a cost before photographs could be viewed.

Dematerialization | This occurs when physical assets disappear. The mobile phone is a perfect example of how many products have dematerialised. A mobile phone contains $1000’s of dollars of equipment from a GPS to a video camera, books and maps etc.

Democratization | This occurs when the technology becomes ubiquitous generally because the costs are reduced significantly and this gives many more people access. The mobile phone is an example of this with smart phones following suit and almost every person on the planet owning a mobile phone. Think about the planet when technologies such as the Internet, Renewable Energy, AI, etc reach democratization.

Here is a video of Peter Diamandis explaining this further.