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The target amount of time per block was set as a global constant (1 block every 10 minutes for bitcoin, 1 block every 15 seconds for ethereum). At fixed intervals, the difficulty is adjusted based on the actual rate of mining. The computation is deterministic, and agreed upon using the standard consensus mechanism. No individual controls it.

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So does that mean the network is now demanding each ether be mined every 12 seconds (20% harder statistic mentioned in the linked article), or the difficulty has increased naturally? E.g. there has been a large spike in the number of ether miners lately, which has caused the network to naturally readjust the difficulty to maintain the 15s/ether mining rate? If so, these GPU miners leaving the field would readjust the difficulty back again towards the original levels, or is this difficulty change a more permanent thing due to some underlying change in the technology?

> So does that mean the network is now demanding each ether be mined every 12 seconds

You have it backwards. A 20% increase in difficulty would mean that a block was only being mined once every 18s. The intuition is that if there are fewer blocks, then it is harder to get one.

I think this change is due to the etherium difficulty bomb:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/themerkle.com/what-is-the-ether...

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