Measuring Cultural Information

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 and the universe that such a civilization knows. An example of this concept is the popular game of "Twenty Questions," as played on Earth. One player imagines an object or conc...