From this Wired article, on de-extinction:
“In the past 10 years, [DNA] sequencing has gotten approximately 500,000 times more efficient,” said biostatistician Steven Salzberg of Johns Hopkins University. “Nothing in the history of civilization or technology has ever gotten that much more efficient that fast.”
I was awestruck when I first read this, but it took me a bit to figure out why. It turns out it was for two reasons: the first was simply due to the fact that the pace of change in any area of human endeavor was so rapid. Then I thought, “These days, I’m surprised 500,000 is the maximum.” Then I was really awestruck: my unconscious assumptions for advancement don’t consider a change of five orders of magnitude in ten years to be abnormal. It truly is an amazing time to be alive.