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There is a special place on Earth at an equally interesting location. Although it has no spatial extent, it has a thriving community and digital economy: every day many people record their fitness activities, there are countless properties offered to sale and it is even the origin of malicious cyber attacks1. Many…
To shield her antennae from the many bruising signals in the air, she walked with her head low. Air currents and electrical pulses from thousands of bees rippled against her, but Flora ignored them all. The pulsing track alone held her focus, clear and simple across the perilously busy lobby, where she had to slow…
The owners of the biggest computers like to think about them as big artificial brains. But actually they are simply repackaging valuable information gathered from everyone else. This is what “big data” means. For instance, a big remote Google or Microsoft computer can translate this op-ed, more or less, from English…
It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a…
Measurement has too often been the leitmotif of many investigations rather than the experimental examination of hypotheses. Mounds of data are collected, which are statistically decorous and methodologically unimpeachable, but conclusions are often trivial and rarely useful in decision making. This results from an…
Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's…
But there may be more significant ways to characterize civilizations than by the energy they use for communications purposes. An important criterion of a civilization is the total amount of information that it stores. This information can be described in terms of bits, the number of yes-no statements concerning itself…
Europe. America. lb. lb. Mammoth Buffalo. Bison *1800 White bear. Ours blanc Caribou. Renne Bear. Ours 153.7 *410 Elk. Elan. Orignal, palmated Red deer. Cerf 288.8 *273 Fallow deer. Daim 167.8 Wolf. Loup 69.8 Roe. Chevreuil 56.7 Glutton. Glouton. Carcajou Wild cat. Chat sauvage 30 Lynx. Loup cervier 25. Beaver. Castor…
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.