A twist on Moore's Law.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: BUSINESS as usual

MOST OF US ARE AT LEAST VAGUELY FAMILIAR with Moore's Law, the observation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles roughly every two years. Moore described this trend in a paper he wrote in 1965, and it has pretty much held true since then, driving exponential improvements in digital electronics and changing our lives with ever-faster, more portable and more powerful devices and applications for them.

I bring this up because I've often wondered if there's a law applicable to communications technology: that every advancement--cell phones, smart phones, email, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.--reduces the value we plate on personal encounters. I doubt it's provable, but I bet it's demonstrable.

We're simply more accessible to each other now--instantly reachable in most cases--so it would make sense that we would take our communications with each other more for granted.

By contrast, anyone over 30 can probably recall the joy of getting a hand-written letter from a friend or a loved one--or the patience required in waiting for the mailman to deliver such a letter you know is en route.

Same thing with the telephone. Anyone else remember the excitement of getting a long-distance call from, say, your grandparents, and having to wait your turn behind a line of parents and siblings for your chance to talk to them? And all the while your parents are calculating the cost of the long-distance bill and urging you to say goodbye till next month or whenever?

I lived in Durango as a kid, out in the country, and we had a six-party line, meaning six households shared one phone line. It was a common occurrence to pick up the phone to make a call but have to wait until someone from one of the other households was finished jabbering away. My older sister and I always thought it would be great to sneak into one of these conversations and try to impersonate one of the callers, to gain use of the phone:

"Well, it's been great talking to you, but I've got to run. Talk to you later." Don't know if that would have worked. We never tried it.

I thought about these things as we prepared this January 2013 issue of ColoradoBiz; actnally not about. the drawbacks of communications advancements--because they're dwarfed by the spectacular benefits--but about the great balance of tech savvy and value placed on interpersonal relationships exhibited by the people featured in this month's magazine.

For example, the profile...