By the time I finish writing this sentence, vastly more data will have been generated around the world than was produced in the entire 18th century, indeed in the entire history of humanity prior to around 1900. This sounds like some crazy thing someone might say just to make small-talk at a party, but it’s literally true. In the late 1990s, all the books in the Library of Congress were estimated to contain around 20 terabytes of data (20 million books of roughly 1MB each). In turn, a figure I have come across repeatedly estimates that there were around 337,000 books published between 1700 and 1800, though it is not clear whether this figure includes books published in East Asian and South Asian languages, or only in the languages of Europe and its colonies. So let’s go ahead and double it, bringing the total number of 18th-century books to 674,000, at around 1MB each (let us say). And let’s double
The ocean of data doesn´t care. However, your writing is “a function of care” (to use Sam Kriss's definition of language), and despite all the toxic waste around, it makes its way to your readers. In this ocean of data, there are still seas full of life, seas that reflect stars and clouds, comfort and despair. Thank you, thank you. Writing is NOT dead.
This reminds me of Korzybsky's "jumping Jesus phenomenon" as described by Robert Anton Wilson:
The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon is my name for the acceleration of information throughout history. I first heard of that through Alfred Korzybski, a Polish mathematician who invented a scientific discipline called General Semantics. Korzybski noted that information was doubling faster and faster, every generation. And he said we've got to be prepared for this, we've got to train ourselves to be less dogmatic and more flexible so that we can deal with change. He took the year 1 A.D. as his basic unit to calculate how long it took for the information available to human beings to double, and it took 1500 years... which brought us up to the Renaissance. Leonardo Da Vinci was in his forties, and the Renaissance was at its height.
I decided to call this unit a "Jesus": so, in 1 A.D. we had "one Jesus", in 1500 we had "two Jesus". The next doubling only took 250 years, so already you can see the acceleration factor, and by 1750 we had "four Jesus". The next doubling took a hundred and fifty years and by 1900 we had "eight Jesus". The next doubling only took fifty years and by 1950 we had "sixteen Jesus". In 1960 in only ten years we had "thirty-two Jesus", by 1967 we had "sixty-four Jesus", and by 1973 we had "128 Jesus", and the latest estimate I've seen is by Dr. Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist who says that knowledge is doubling every year. But I heard that estimate, oh, five or six years ago. I saw something on the net recently, somebody estimated it's doubling about twice a year now."
Well, the "Tycho Brahe Secret" book I worked on for years is 2.48 MB, but the image AI generated while I was yawning, using a prompt shorter than this reply, is 2.13 MB.
Most of the data "produced" is garbage, say 99.99% at least.
Just to be clear, that's the book on psychedelics, right? Looking forward to reading that! And hi from Qatar airport where I managed to snatch some wifi :)
The ocean of data doesn´t care. However, your writing is “a function of care” (to use Sam Kriss's definition of language), and despite all the toxic waste around, it makes its way to your readers. In this ocean of data, there are still seas full of life, seas that reflect stars and clouds, comfort and despair. Thank you, thank you. Writing is NOT dead.
This reminds me of Korzybsky's "jumping Jesus phenomenon" as described by Robert Anton Wilson:
The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon is my name for the acceleration of information throughout history. I first heard of that through Alfred Korzybski, a Polish mathematician who invented a scientific discipline called General Semantics. Korzybski noted that information was doubling faster and faster, every generation. And he said we've got to be prepared for this, we've got to train ourselves to be less dogmatic and more flexible so that we can deal with change. He took the year 1 A.D. as his basic unit to calculate how long it took for the information available to human beings to double, and it took 1500 years... which brought us up to the Renaissance. Leonardo Da Vinci was in his forties, and the Renaissance was at its height.
I decided to call this unit a "Jesus": so, in 1 A.D. we had "one Jesus", in 1500 we had "two Jesus". The next doubling only took 250 years, so already you can see the acceleration factor, and by 1750 we had "four Jesus". The next doubling took a hundred and fifty years and by 1900 we had "eight Jesus". The next doubling only took fifty years and by 1950 we had "sixteen Jesus". In 1960 in only ten years we had "thirty-two Jesus", by 1967 we had "sixty-four Jesus", and by 1973 we had "128 Jesus", and the latest estimate I've seen is by Dr. Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist who says that knowledge is doubling every year. But I heard that estimate, oh, five or six years ago. I saw something on the net recently, somebody estimated it's doubling about twice a year now."
quam magnus numerus harenae vere cuduntur libelli hodierne in quorum foliis vix simia nuda cacaret
Well, the "Tycho Brahe Secret" book I worked on for years is 2.48 MB, but the image AI generated while I was yawning, using a prompt shorter than this reply, is 2.13 MB.
Most of the data "produced" is garbage, say 99.99% at least.
Just to be clear, that's the book on psychedelics, right? Looking forward to reading that! And hi from Qatar airport where I managed to snatch some wifi :)
I don't think there's more data because it wasn't considered data in those days.
God is dead. The author is dead. Writing, too. ISIS got it wrong then: "They love life; we love death"!
Who's the "we" in "Creation is all..."?