How much information exists now, in the past, and in the future? I
need a chart that illustrates, in ballpark terms, how the total amount
of available information (print, data, audio, video, etc.) is
expanding. Preferably begining sometime just before the printing press
and ending at some point in the foreseeable future. |
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
23 Aug 2005 18:43 PDT
silver5456-ga,
Pretty fascinating question you've asked here, but I must admit, I've
never seen -- and I really don't think there exists -- a long term
quantification of the amount of information there was in the world at
different times in history.
Indeed, the very idea of putting a number on an "amount" of
information is a very modern one, and attempts at quantifying global
information only go back a few years, at best.
The most well known and well-regarded effort on this comes out of
Berekely's "How Much Information?" project:
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm
but they only extend the timeline back to the 1990's.
There are some long-term proxies that show the tremendous explosion of
information, though. For instance, there are records of the number of
letters sent through national mail services that extend back to the
1700's (in the US, there were 800,000 pieces of mail sent in 1790 --
roughly about a day's worth, today).
There are also pretty good longer term records for the use of the
telegraph and telephone.
There are probably estimates of book publishing throughout the ages,
as well, though I've yet to come across these.
Would the proxy information be of interest to you as an answer to your question?
If so, I'd be glad to dig around some more and see what I can find.
Let me know what you think.
pafalafa-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
silver5456-ga
on
24 Aug 2005 05:52 PDT
Once again, all I'm looking for is an "illustrative chart that I
suspect, even with a log scale ordinate, will be "hockey stick" in
appeaence. In other words, I'm writing a paper that shows that
available information was statistically negeligible before the
printing press; took off with the advent of public libraries,
newspapers, journals, etc,; saw another inflection point w/radio TV;
an even larger one with the internet; and, (the poin tof the whole
paper) is at the cusp of yet another explosion in the form of IM,
Blogs, Vlogs, etc.
`any ideas on how assemble this "illustrative" chart?
|
Clarification of Question by
silver5456-ga
on
13 Sep 2005 13:53 PDT
Please help me clarif and/or restate so as to elicit reponse
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
13 Sep 2005 17:26 PDT
silver556-ga,
As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I simply don't think the long-term
trends that your looking for really exist -- total 'information' was
an alien concept until a few decades ago, and no one (to the best of
my knowledge) has tried to calculate the total amount of information
in the world any earlier than around the 1990's.
The only thing I can suggest is to use a proxy statistic. Probably
the best documented is the growth in the mail service. You can see a
table of data going back to 1790 for the US here:
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/print.htm
Table 2.12: Statistics about U.S. mail service
Mail service grew from under a million pieces per year in 1790, to
more than 200 billion pieces in 2002 -- more than a 200,000-fold
increase in a bit more than 200 years.
I really think this is your best bet. I'd be glad to put these data
into a bar or line graph that you can download, if that would meet
your needs.
If not, the ball's really in your court. Tell us as clearly as you
can what you need, that you think can be provided. We'll do our best!
pafalafa-ga
|
