TGIF #1: Moore’s Law (of People)

layoffs or leisure?

I changed my original plan for the inaugural workLIT “TGIF” poem post after reading Meghan O’Rourke’s timely guest essay in today’s NYT. I wrote this poem 18 months ago after leveraging ChatGPT for the first time in the workplace. Beyond her thoughtful experiments as both a professor and a creative, O’Rourke cites an MIT Media Lab study that will likely be the topic of a future poem - “Your Brain on LLM”.

I look forward to your thoughts…

Image for this poem (fittingly) designed by ChatGPT but the poem is pure HMC :)

---

Moore’s Law (of People)

It is widely believed 
that tiny processors get smaller 
each year collapsing in on themselves 
to make room for more on less.

Computing power compounds 
in the palm of my hand 
and up in the clouds,  
silicon wafer sandwiches.

And so I wonder 
if there is a Moore’s Law of people?
Smarter and skinnier working side by side 
in ever smaller, yellow anchovy-oiled tins. 

We’ve chased the cost of people 
down the curve and 
around the flat earth 
to support efficiency, margin. 

Now agents assist our jobs to be done, 
bots cheaper than bodies, 
the price of work falling fast, 
like a Moore-Man. 

Layoffs and leisure in tension, 
now the only question 
is what will you do 
with all that spare time?

Heather M. Coughlin (2024)

---

workLIT Memo: Moore’s Law predicts that the number of transistors on a chip will double roughly every two years, with a minimal increase in cost. Created by Gordon Moore before he co-founded Intel, Moore’s Law has remained the golden rule for the electronics industry since its 1965 publication. It only stops when innovation stops, and innovation continues to push forward.