Laying down the law

Almost all engineers are aware of Moore's law'. The phenomenon it describes has had an amazing impact on electronics over the last few decades, continually making devices cheaper, faster and smaller. Moore's law is an example of prediction about technological growth - it is not founded in laws of nature, like Ohm's Law, for example, but is essentially an economic prediction based on observations of previous trends in scientific research and industry. In this article, we take a look at a range of such laws or predictions, in particular those with relevance to communications technology understanding where they have come from and what their impact might be in the future.