I am seeking help with the formulation of an abstract equation for calculating, over time, people’s capacity to absorb new technology.

In 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore said that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost would double about every 24 months. Most people in the chip business agree Moore was basically correct. The rest of us believe it intuitively because new technology has been coming at us at ever-increasing velocity and power ever since.

It seems to me people’s capacity to absorb the best new technology must necessarily diminish each year as the sheer volume of innovations increases. What if my evolving equation to calculate this is actually as simple and dreadful as this:

A=T(10%)

(A=Absorption or adaptation, T=all technology innovations in a year’s time multiplied by 10%. Why 10%? It’s a guess. The 10% number is an estimate designed to compensate for all the new innovation that isn’t worthy, lasting or important while at the same time suggesting that the average person is doing well if he or she can, let’s say, Absorb 10 of the best new things from a crop of 100. That leaves 90 on the table. But is gets worse. When, within about eight years 10% = 1000 new things we ought to know about, we can absorb 100 but abandon any hope of catching up with 900 of the remaining best ideas. What are the implications of this?)

If it is true that people’s rate of technology absorption is a constant, then it means in the next ten years, more (Moore) and more great new technology innovations will be like so much seed sown on pavement.

Alternatively, the formula could be expanded to include an offset for "O" for the annual obsolescence which in turn would make more room for an equal measure of new capacity to absorb. Standards (S) and Integration (I) might be factors because they make the new technology more seamless and easier to use. An  “a” factor could be added to represent the age of the person on the theory that younger people adapt to more faster. Your thoughts?

I ask in part because I’m also wondering if we as people, generally speaking, between the age of 20 and 60 have a finite and diminishing capacity for technological change and does it dwindle in us over time the way a large finite number of female eggs deplete to an exponential curve with the passing of years. Is there, in other words, a mathematical equation which explains how overwhelmed I often feel these days by all that is new in technology… and why? Have I entered “mentalpause?”

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