This idea of Moore's Law being a "baseline benchmark" for tracking genome sequencing costs just feels too definitive, almost like an old family legend that everyone keeps repeating but doesn't quite hold up anymore. It reminds me of Manolo, my neighbor, who always insists the price of olive oil sets a "baseline" for everything, but then the harvests change, new pests arrive, and his old baseline is suddenly useless.
What truly matters are the scientists in the lab, the unexpected breakthroughs, the clever new materials they invent—those are the real forces pushing things forward, not some article from decades past.
It’s a nice story, but it doesn't show the true, messy, human arc of progress in the lab, where real people faced new turns and discovered things nobody predicted.
Comparing it to an old paper from the 60s is like saying the speed of a horse-drawn carriage sets the pace for a high-speed train today.