Exponential growth can be applied to “populations” that aren’t even alive. For example, several years ago someone figured out that the growth of computing technology seems to be roughly exponential.
… For example, the power of the average CPU chip doubles about every 2 years.
… Back in the day (circa 1990) a 512K hard drive was considered pretty cool — nowadays hard drives are measured in gigs and soon we’ll be talking about terabytes
… phones, cameras, mp3 players — all have grown exponentially.
Here’s one example:
If you went out to buy one of the first digital cameras, in 1994, every 140 pixels cost about a dollar. In 2005, the same dollar (adjusted for inflation) bought you 20,000 pixels. So, the pixels per dollar doubled every
years.