I was recently thinking about Moore's Law and if it is truly coming to an end. My initial reaction is that it doesn't matter in itself, if the number of transistors doubles, what might matter is that our compute power is doubling.

This led me to think that maybe Moore's Law is looking at the wrong metric, and is there a more fundamental law regarding increased capacity. Some proof of this is in the drop in prices of cloud computing and increases in network capacity. If chips stopped getting more powerful, in theory, we may not notice as the capability of the entire network continues to increase at the familiar rate.

However, this begs the question, did this increased capacity actually begin with Moore's Law and computer processing in general? Or is there an overarching law of progress which has always existed. To prove this, I'd need to go back and look at the growth of industrialization. I suspect as the capabilities of the factories slowed, our network speed (rail and sea, then road and then air) increased. As the network speed reached a plateau, we began to find places where we could manufacture more cheaply, thereby increasing the output per cost. Does the same growth exist in agriculture? What major industry does not fit?

There is some evidence that a law similar to Moore's law exists not only for technology. What effect does that have in our understanding of why things grow?

[edit: this is was an except from my YC application to the question regarding what have you discovered]