2. Information Technology as Driver of Digitisation

Driven by the extreme increase in the efficiency of information technology (IT), the digitisation wave keeps approaching us unstoppably and ever faster. The so-called Moore’s Law, which more than 50 years ago has already described a doubling of the capacity of integrated circuits over a period of 12 months, has been synonymous with the ongoing massive increase in the performance of IT. The chapter first explains the essential fundamentals of IT development. Subsequently, the subjects of IT security and energy demand are highlighted as potential obstacles to the development of digitisation. In a technology outlook, future developments such as 3D chip architectures, carbon nanotubes and quantum computers are presented. These build the basis for future IT performance improvements. The chapter concludes with the concept of technological singularity on a rather visionary outlook. Until now there don’t appear to be technological limits and it is only a matter of time until the human intelligence will be overtaken by “machine intelligence”.