19 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Accelerating Knowledge
The rate at which man has been storing up useful knowledge about himself and the universe
has been spiraling upward for 10,000 years. The rate took a sharp upward leap with the
invention of writing, but even so it remained painfully slow over centuries of time. The next
great leap forward in knowledge—acquisition did not occur until the invention of movable
type in the fifteenth century by Gutenberg and others. Prior to 1500, by the most optimistic
estimates, Europe was producing books at a...Toffler describes and quantifies the increasing production of information in human civilization and its implications.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
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...The number of bits communicated in our radio broadcasts is quite enormous, conveying a great deal of information about our culture.