...human nature is to presume linearity. That is, most people assume progress will proceed in a prescribed, organized, and straightforward fashion. This line of thinking is best exposed with a short quiz. Consider a pond. If a lily in the pond doubles every day and it takes thirty days to completely cover the pond, on what day will the pond be one-quarter covered? On what day will it be half covered?
Many people instinctively respond that the pond will be one-quarter covered in one week and half covered on the Day 15. They are wrong. By the end of the third week—a full week after many people guess the pond will be half covered—lilies only cover 1/512th of the pond. In fact, the area covered is so small (.002 percent) as to be indiscernible. It is only on Day 28 that the pond becomes one-quarter covered. It is half covered the next day and, because it is doubling every day, it is, of course, fully covered the following day.
Why do I tell this story? It is because many people demonstrate the same tendency with respect to the emergence of new technologies—like nanotechnology—which are growing almost exponentially. That is, they overestimate the potential for the technology in the short run (i.e., they think nanotechnology will achieve market dominance much sooner than it actually will). And when that doesn’t happen, they tend to become disappointed and discouraged.
