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This is easier to say when you're near the top of the current curve.
It doesn't affect me much that my computer can't handle hi-def youtube, because I'm just a couple of doubling times behind the state of the art.
But if you were using a computer ten doubling times back, you'd have trouble even just reading lesswrong. Even if you overcame the format and software issues, we'd be trading funny cat videos that are bigger than all your storage. You'd get nothing without a helper god to downsample them.
When the singularity approaches, the doubling time will decrease, for some people. Maybe not for all.
Maybe will will /feel/ like a linear increase in utility for the people who's abilities are being increased right along. For people who are 10 doublings behind and still falling, it will be obvious something is different..
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It could if, for example, it were only available in large chunks. If you have $50 today you can't get the $/MIPS of a $5000 server. You could maybe rent the time, but that requires a high level of knowledge, existing internet access at some level, and an application that is still meaningful on a remote basis.
The first augmentation technology that requires surgery will impose a different kind of 'cost'. and will spread unevenly even among people who have the money.
It's also important to note that an increase in doubling time would show up as a /bend/ in a log scale graph, not a straight line.
Yes Kurzweil does show a bend in the real data in several cases. I did not try to duplicate that in my plots, I just did straight doubling every year.
I think any bending in the log scale plot could be fairly called acceleration.
But just the doubling itself, while it leads to ever-increases step sizes, is not acceleration. In the case of computer performance it seems clear exponential growth of power produces only linear growth in utility.
I feel this point is not made clear in all contexts. In presentations I felt some of the linear scale graphs were used to "hype" the idea that everything was speeding up dramatically. I think only the bend points to a "speeding up".