I think this is a pretty logical idea, but it’s silly to put on a graph. I think, though, that the most significant increases in inventions would follow every improvement in communications, because of the subsequent increase in the availability of information. You don’t have to have years of schooling to be knowledgable in a field, you can just check it out on Wikipedia or Encarta or whatever. If you want to collaborate on something, you don’t need to wait for a boat to cross the ocean, or some guy on horseback to carry it across the continent.

Preventing people from shouting FIRE in a crowded theater is a good reason to limit the first amendment. Fearing that Disney and Sony will make less money is a bad reason.

The DMCA needs serious fixing. Please TALK about it until it’s fixed.

Kurzweil might be right, but this particular argument isn’t persuasive.

2005 Kurzweil may have recent events grouped incorrectly and may have the next epoch wrong by decades or even centuries but in broad strokes I think he’s right.

You may be interested in Robin Hanson’s Long-Term Growth As A Sequence of Exponential Modes.