At Think Progress, Matthew Yglesias wonders if we should slow down Moore's Law. Computing power has improved at an "un-optimally rapid pace," Yglesias says, adding that technology is changing so quickly that it's no longer worthwhile to think about how to get the most out of existing technology. "I conjecture that if after doubling, then doubling again, then doubling a third time the frontier starts advancing more slowly we might actually start to see more 'real world' gains as people come up with better ideas for what to do with all this computing power," he says.
But Mike the Mad Biologist disagrees. Instead of slowing down the pace of technological advancement, he says, we need to speed it up because right now, researchers don't have enough computing power to handle all the data they generate. The cost of sequencing is declining at a far greater rate than the cost of interpreting the data. "Slowing down would be a really bad thing," he says.