(Ursul A.D.). Stanislav Lem described this problem and the inflation of culture caused by it in Summa Technologiae (1964), and later repeated it several times (for example, satirically - in Pericalipsis from the collection Absolute Emptiness, 1971).
Civilizational trends in the development of the information society are characterized by the fact that 18 ∙ 10 18 bytes (18 Exabytes) of information were produced by mankind in the city. Over the past five years, mankind has produced more information than in the entire previous history. The volume of information in the world is increasing annually by 30%. On average, 2.5 ∙ 10 8 bytes are produced per person per year in the world.
According to statistics, the volume digital information doubles every eighteen months. For the most part (up to 95%) this stream consists of unstructured data (only 5% are various databases - structured information in one way or another).
Research issue
The following are developing: methodology and statistics of measurements in the society of information and information loads, regulation of the safe content of information by federal legislation.
The information explosion is no less dangerous than the demographic one. According to Malthus, humanity as a producer lags behind itself as a consumer, that is, we are talking about the ratio of the total biological mass and the total economic product of humanity. But in the competition with itself, humanity still has a much better chance than the individual in the competition with all of humanity. As it turns out by the beginning of the third millennium, the main resources of society are not industrial or agricultural, but informational. If the material production of mankind lags behind its own material needs, then the information consumption of an individual lags even more behind information production humanity. This is not a crisis of overpopulation, but of misunderstanding, a crisis of tribal identity. Humanity can feed itself - but can it understand itself, embrace by the mind of the individual that which is created by the species mind? Will a biologically measured period of life be enough for a person to become a person?
- M. N. Epshtein, "Information explosion and postmodern trauma"
see also
- Information Overload / Information Noise
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Notes
An excerpt characterizing the Information explosion
She now first saw him and was now experiencing everything that she felt then. She remembered his long, sad, stern gaze at these words, and understood the significance of the reproach and despair of this long gaze.“I agreed,” Natasha said to herself now, “that it would be awful if he remained always suffering. I said it that way then only because it would be terrible for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it would be awful for me. Then he still wanted to live - he was afraid of death. And I told him so rudely, stupidly. I didn't think that. I thought quite differently. If I said what I thought, I would say: even if he was dying, he would be dying all the time before my eyes, I would be happy in comparison with what I am now. Now ... Nothing, no one. Did he know this? No. Didn't know and never will. And now you can never, never fix it. " And again he spoke the same words to her, but now in her imagination Natasha answered him differently. She stopped him and said: “Terrible for you, but not for me. You know that without you there is nothing in my life, and to suffer with you is the best happiness for me. " And he took her hand and shook it the way he shook it on that terrible evening, four days before his death. And in her imagination she spoke to him still other gentle, loving speeches that she could have said then, which she spoke now. "I love you ... I love you ... I love you ..." she said, convulsively clenching her hands, clenching her teeth with a fierce effort.
And sweet sorrow overtook her, and tears already appeared in her eyes, but suddenly she asked herself: to whom is she saying this? Where is he and who is he now? And again everything was covered with dry, harsh bewilderment, and again, tensely knitting her eyebrows, she peered at where he was. And so, now, it seemed to her that she was penetrating a secret ... But at that moment, as it seemed to her that something incomprehensible was revealed to her, the loud knock of the door lock handle painfully struck her hearing. Quickly and carelessly, with a frightened, unoccupied expression on her face, the maid Dunyasha entered the room.
“Come to papa, rather,” said Dunyasha with a special and lively expression. “Misfortune, about Pyotr Ilyich… a letter,” she said with a sob.
In addition to the general feeling of alienation from all people, Natasha at this time experienced a special feeling of alienation from the faces of her family. All her own: father, mother, Sonya, were so close to her, accustomed, so everyday that all their words, feelings seemed to her an insult to the world in which she lived recent times, and she was not only indifferent, but looked at them with hostility. She heard Dunyasha's words about Pyotr Ilyich, about misfortune, but did not understand them.
“What kind of misfortune is there, what kind of misfortune can there be? They all have their old, familiar and deceased, ”Natasha said to herself in her mind.
When she entered the hall, her father quickly left the countess's room. His face was wrinkled and wet with tears. He apparently ran out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were crushing him. Seeing Natasha, he frantically waved his arms and burst out with painful convulsive sobs that distorted his round, soft face.
- Pe ... Petya ... Go, go, she ... she ... is calling ... - And he, sobbing like a child, quickly seeding with weak legs, went up to the chair and fell almost on him, covering his face with his hands.
Suddenly how electricity ran through all of Natasha's essence. Something struck her terribly in the heart. She felt terrible pain; it seemed to her that something was coming off in her and that she was dying. But in the wake of the pain, she felt an instant release from the prohibition of life that lay on her. Seeing her father and hearing the terrible, rude cry of her mother from behind the door, she instantly forgot herself and her grief. She ran to her father, but he, waving his hand powerlessly, pointed to the mother's door. Princess Marya, pale, with a trembling lower jaw, came out of the door and took Natasha by the hand, telling her something. Natasha did not see, did not hear her. She walked quickly through the door, stopped for a moment, as if in a struggle with herself, and ran to her mother.
The Countess was lying on an armchair, stretching out strangely awkwardly, and banging her head against the wall. Sonya and the girls held her hands.
- Natasha, Natasha! .. - shouted the countess. - Not true, not true ... He is lying ... Natasha! She shouted, pushing those around her away. - Go away, everyone, it's not true! Killed! .. ha ha ha ha! .. not true!
Natasha knelt on a chair, bent over her mother, hugged her, lifted her with unexpected force, turned her face to her and pressed herself against her.
- Mom! .. dear! .. I'm here, my friend. Mama, - she whispered to her, without stopping for a second.
She would not let her mother out, fought tenderly with her, demanded pillows, water, unbuttoned and tore her mother's dress.
“My friend, darling ... mamma, darling,” she whispered incessantly, kissing her head, hands, face and feeling how her tears flowed uncontrollably in streams, tickling her nose and cheeks.
The Countess squeezed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and fell silent for a moment. Suddenly she got up with unaccustomed speed, looked around senselessly and, seeing Natasha, began to squeeze her head with all her might. Then she turned her face, wrinkled with pain, to her and gazed into it for a long time.
“Natasha, you love me,” she said in a quiet, trusting whisper. - Natasha, won't you deceive me? Will you tell me the whole truth?
Information explosion is a process during which there is a constant increase in the speed and volume of information on a global scale.
It is also worth talking about information barriers. This concept was developed by Academician V.M. Glushkov. It represents the discrepancy between the information needs of society and the technical capabilities of their implementation. According to Glushkov, there are three information barriers:
1) Associated with the discovery of writing, which makes it possible to preserve and transmit knowledge. Up to this point, the human brain was the only place where information was stored. This barrier was overcome around the 5th millennium BC. e.
2) Associated with the advent of book printing, this event dramatically increased the number information carriers... This barrier was overcome around the 15th century. Later, new methods of disseminating and storing information arose, such as: telegraph, telephone, photography, television, cinema, magnetic recordings. But the person still passed information through his brain, the human brain processed this information.
3) Associated with the emergence of Electronic Computing Machines (COMPUTERS), which made it possible to increase the speed of information processing by an order of magnitude. This barrier was passed in the middle of the 20th century, together with the appearance of the first computer. At that moment, the amount of information turned out to be so large that the human brain and its abilities for this processing were simply not enough.
And accordingly it is clear that the growth of information became especially significant after the scientific and technological revolution. If we now analyze the growth of information, we can see a simple exponential dependence of the growth in the amount of information on time, which is shown in the figure below.
Mikhail Naumovich Epstein in his book "Information explosion and trauma of postmodernism" writes that: "Two centuries ago, in 1798, Thomas R. Malthus released his famous" Experience on the law of population and its impact on the future improvement of society ", where he defined the law of disproportion between population growth and the amount of natural resources required for the life of mankind. It turns out that humanity is expanding exponentially, and natural resources are renewed at a rate described by arithmetic progression. And Malthus predicted that with such a growth rate of people, on Earth, there simply will be no resources left to feed humanity and famine will come. But by the end of the 20th century, this problem was partially avoided due to the development of technology, and due to "... the success of education, which sharply reduced the birth rate in civilized countries."
And two hundred years after Malthus, appears new problem, but this time it is not demographic, but informational.
The information explosion is manifested in the following:
- The emergence of contradictions between the limited human ability to process information and the existing powerful streams and sizes of stored information.
- The existence of a huge amount of unnecessary (redundant) information, hindering the perception of information useful to the consumer.
- The emergence of all kinds of economic, political and other social barriers preventing the dissemination of information. For example, classified information required for a certain production.
The consequences of the information explosion are many, I would like to talk about the problem of human intelligence after the information explosion.
§2. Human intelligence after information explosion.
What is intelligence? The Great Soviet Encyclopedia says that "intelligence (from the Latin intellectus - knowledge, understanding, reason), the ability of thinking, rational knowledge, in contrast to such, for example, mental abilities as feeling, will, intuition, imagination, etc. . "
For a person to feel normal, it is necessary that he collapse in himself 3 components: physical, spiritual and intellectual. If you take away at least one of the components, then a person will not be able to exist.
To train the intellect, the brain needs to work, i.e. read, think, etc., but do it gradually and completely, and not in leaps and bounds, a little bit everywhere.
This is the problem of the information explosion. A man lags behind mankind. There is a growing imbalance between "the development of human individuality, limited by biological age, and the socio-technological development of mankind, for which no time limit is still visible." With every new generation, an increasingly heavy burden of knowledge and impressions accumulated in previous centuries and with which a person is unable to assimilate is imposed on a person's personality.
This whole amount of knowledge and that vast amount of information that accumulates in the interval of, say, 16-17 centuries, is now delivered to our head within one week, that is, the speed of information creation increases thousands of times, despite the fact that the information accumulated by all previous at times, it is also continuously summarized and updated as part of new information resources.
It turns out that a person of the modern turn (20-21) centuries must understand in his life a colossal number of times more information than his compatriot who lived somewhere 300-400 years ago.
You can cite some statistics related to the information explosion, the main victims of which are the last two or three generations of the 20th century.
The world's best libraries are doubling their number of books and treasures every 14 years. At the beginning of the 13th century, the Sorbonne library in Paris was considered the largest in Europe: it contained 1,338 books.
The daily edition of the New York Times has more information than the average 17th century Englishman has ever studied in his lifetime.
Over the past 30 years, more new informationthan in the previous five thousand years.
Consequently, a person may feel constrained in development, a cripple, unable to fully compare with the information environment surrounding him.
Voltaire said: "The number of facts and essays is growing so rapidly that in the near future we will have to reduce everything to extracts and dictionaries."
This is confirmed in the 21st century, fewer and fewer people read classic novels of the 17-19 centuries, and some generally know about their existence only from encyclopedias, and short retellings, movies, articles in magazines and the Internet. This is to be expected, since a large amount of information has appeared that cannot be studied by a person in his life. And Epshtein M.N. in his book he says that if the average life expectancy of a person was increased to a thousand years, then the culture would return to its normal course, and a person would have enough time and energy to read all the great works of the classics without haste, and the study of various aspects would be given more time than in ordinary human life.
If earlier you had to travel around the world to get a certain book, now you can hardly even go to the library, because all books fit into computer memory. For example, according to research conducted by Carnegie Mallon University, over the entire life of printing, people have created more than 100 million books. Nearly 28 million of these can be found in the Library of Congress.
Usually, a book in DOC format weighs on average up to a megabyte. Therefore, the volume of all books in in electronic format the Library of Congress is close to 28 terabytes.
It is also estimated that the increase in information available on the Internet, according to small estimates, is 20 terabytes of data per month.
Impressive numbers aren't they?
And what will happen if the human brain for such a short time to shove so much information, and yet it is still necessary to verify it for truth, because if you read various messages on the Internet about one problem, then almost every author talks about this problem in different ways, or sometimes even contradicts himself. So what will happen to the brain in such a situation, it seems to me that it will "explode", or the person will simply "go crazy" from all this rapidly developing information.
Topic 1. Introduction. Modern information society. Informational resources.
Information about objects and phenomena of the environment, their parameters, properties and state, which are perceived information Systems (living organisms, control machines, etc.) in the process of life and work. As applied to data processing on computers, an arbitrary sequence of symbols that carry a semantic load.
1. Information retrieval system.
2. Information.
3. Directory (directory, folder).
4. Internet.
A society in which the majority of employees are engaged in the production, storage, processing and sale of information is called
1. modern;
2. progressive;
3. informational;
4. humane.
The term “informatization of society” means:
1. an increase in the amount of redundant information circulating in society;
2. purposeful and effective use of information in all areas of human activity, achieved through the massive use of modern information and communication technologies;
3. increasing the role of the media;
4. massive use of computers.
Information resources are a product of activities
1.programmers
2. practically all major professional groups
3.engineers
4.programmers and engineers
The main resources of the country,
1.materials and energy
2.materials and information
3.materials, energy, information
4.energy and information
Individual documents and individual arrays of documents in information systems (libraries, archives, funds, data banks, other information systems) are called
1. information bases data;
3. informational data;
4. databases.
A named collection of any data located on an external storage device and stored, sent and processed as a whole. May contain program, numeric data, text, encoded image, etc.
2. Directory (directory, folder)
4. Variable
Topic 2. Information processes.
What are the processes related to information:
1. transmission and storage of information;
2. storage and processing of information;
3. collection, transmission, storage and processing of information;
4. receiving and storing information.
Information technology is
1. a process that includes a set of methods for storing, processing and transmitting information based on the use of computer technology.
2. a process that includes a set of methods for collecting, storing and transmitting information based on the use of computer technology.
3. a process that includes a set of methods for collecting, storing, processing and transmitting information based on the use of computer technology.
4. a process that includes a set of methods for collecting, storing, processing information based on the use of computer technology.
What information explosion?
1. daily news from hot spots;
2. the rapid growth of flows and volumes of information;
3. increased number of newspapers and magazines;
4. communication via the Internet.
Toolkits information technology can be:
1. word processor, spreadsheets, database management systems, publishing systems;
2.database management systems, publishing systems, electronic notebooks, electronic calendars, information systems functional purpose (financial, accounting, marketing, etc.);
3. word processor, spreadsheets, database management systems, publishing systems, electronic notebooks, electronic calendars, functional information systems (financial, accounting, marketing, etc.), expert systems;
4. word processor, spreadsheets;
Select events that can be attributed to information processes:
1. exercise on a sports equipment;
2. waterfall;
3. roll call of those present at the lesson;
4. ride on a carousel.
An example of a process for storing information is:
1. the process of restricting access to information to persons who do not have the right to do so;
2. the process of unauthorized use of information;
3.the sequence of human actions aimed at preserving the data structure and their values, presented in one form or another on tangible medium information (paper, birch bark, ML, MD, etc.);
4. the process of creating computer data banks and knowledge bases.
Information search is understood as:
1.Long distance transmission of information using computer systems;
2. reading fiction;
3.obtaining the necessary information by observing the reality, using catalogs, archives, help systems, computer networks, databases and knowledge bases, etc .;
4. sorting information.
The word "interactive" (from English interaction - interaction) means:
1.the ability for third parties to interfere in the communication process;
2. the ability to change the topic of communication;
3. the ability to actively intervene in the communication process, change it in one direction or another, direct it in the right direction;
4. inability to interfere in the communication process.
Topic 3. Properties of information. Types and forms of information presentation .
Information that does not depend on personal opinion or judgment can be called:
1.relevant;
2. useful;
3. objective;
4. understandable.
Information reflecting the true state of affairs is called:
1. understandable;
2. objective;
3. reliable;
4. helpful.
Information that is essential and important in this momentare called:
1. useful;
2. objective;
3. complete.
4. relevant;
1. useful;
2. relevant;
3. understandable.
4. complete;
Information sufficient to solve the problem is called:
1. useful;
2. relevant;
3. complete;
4. understandable.
Information presented in a language accessible to the recipient is called:
1. complete;
2. useful;
3. reliable.
4. understandable;
By way of perception information is distinguished by a person the following types information:
1.text, numerical, graphic, tabular, etc.;
2. scientific, social, political, economic, religious, etc .;
3. visual, sound, tactile, olfactory, gustatory;
4.mathematical, biological, medical, psychological, etc.
Visual information is called information that is perceived by a person through:
1.the organs of touch (skin);
2. the organ of smell;
3. organs of vision;
4. organs of perception of taste.
Audio information is information that is perceived through:
1. organs of vision;
2. organs of touch (skin);
3. organs of hearing;
4. organs of perception of taste.
According to the form of presentation, information can be conditionally divided into the following types:
1.social, political, economic, technical, religious, etc .;
2. everyday, scientific, industrial, managerial;
3. text, numeric, symbolic, graphic, tabular, etc .;
4. visual, sound, tactile, olfactory, gustatory.
An example text information can serve:
1. a rule in a native language textbook;
2. illustration in the book;
3. multiplication table on the cover of the school notebook;
4. piece of music.
An example of storing numerical information is:
1. talking on the phone;
2. illustration in the book;
3. table of values \u200b\u200bof trigonometric functions;
4. lyrics.
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Date the page was created: 2016-02-12
New functional behavioral hallmarks in the form of useful communication skills. a - the population of the Earth is 7 billion; b - literacy; c - reading-typing - accessible to all literate; d - receiving radio, television information (number of receivers); e - information link via phones, computers, Internet (number of phones, computers, Internet users)
Information explosion - a constant increase in the speed and volume of publications (volume of information) on a planetary scale. An avalanche-like increase in the mass of various information in modern society received the name "information explosion" in 1975 (Ursul A. D.) [ ]. Stanislav Lem described this problem and the inflation of culture caused by it in the book "The Sum of Technology" (1964), and later repeated it several times (for example, satirically - in "Pericalipsis" from the collection "Absolute Emptiness", 1971).
Civilization trends in the development of the information society are characterized by the fact that in the city of mankind produced information 18 ∙ 10 18 bytes (18 Exabytes). Over the past five years, mankind has produced more information than in the entire previous history. The volume of information in the world is increasing annually by 30%. On average, 2.5 ∙ 10 8 bytes are produced per person per year in the world.
Statistically, the volume of digital information doubles every eighteen months. For the most part (up to 95%) this stream consists of unstructured data (only 5% are various databases - structured information in one way or another).
Research issue
The following are developing: methodology and statistics of measurements in the society of information and information loads, regulation of the safe content of information by federal legislation.
The information explosion is no less dangerous than the demographic explosion. According to Malthus, humanity as a producer lags behind itself as a consumer, that is, we are talking about the ratio of the total biological mass and the total economic product of humanity. But in the competition with itself, humanity still has a much better chance than the individual in the competition with all of humanity. As it turns out by the beginning of the third millennium, the main resources of society are not industrial or agricultural, but informational. If the material production of mankind lags behind his own material needs, then the information consumption of the individual lags behind the information production of mankind even more. This is not a crisis of overpopulation, but of misunderstanding, a crisis of tribal identity. Humanity can feed itself - but can it understand itself, embrace by the mind of the individual that which is created by the species mind? Will a biologically measured period of life be enough for a person to become a person?
- Today, 183 billion messages are transmitted daily on our planet. email (more than 2 million messages per second).
- Every day, users make 1.6 million blog entries.
- Videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute for a total of 20 hours.
- Over the next two years, the total volume of data will grow sixfold annually, and the volume of corporate data - 50 times.
- Over the 210 years of its existence, the world's largest US Library of Congress has accumulated more than 29 million books and periodicals, 4.8 million maps, 2.7 records and 57 million manuscripts. Today, a similar amount of digital information is generated in five minutes.
- The amount of information published weekly in the New York Times exceeds the amount of information that a person received in his entire life in the 18th century.
Exapoto is coming in 2015
In 2015, in just 12 months, a volume of information equal to 92.5 million US Libraries of Congress will be created:
- corporate IP traffic will generate about 100 exabytes;
- another 100 exabytes will generate movie downloads and peer-to-peer user file sharing;
- video communications and virtual worlds will generate about 400 exabytes.
In 1956, when the first hard drive was created, a storage system for one megabyte of information cost, at today's prices (adjusted for inflation), 78,000 US dollars, and a "supercomputer" with such hard disk weighed over a ton.
in 2029, it will be possible to buy a system for storing 11 petabytes of data for just $ 100. A petabyte is equal to one quadrillion bytes, i.e. one byte followed by 15 zeros, and 11 petabytes would be a video if it had been continuously recorded on a Flip camera from 1492 to the present day, and such a device would still have an unused supply of electronic memory. In other words, storage capacity is growing by leaps and bounds, and their cost is rapidly declining.
Astronomical changes are coming in the field of computing technology: by the mid-2020s there will be quantum computers... Today, the computing power of a PC worth about a thousand dollars is 2-3 percent of the power human brainperforming about 100 trillion calculations per second. By 2050, the computing power of a computer costing the same $ 1,000 will equal the computing power of all 9 billion people who will by that time inhabit our planet.
IN information sphere we are seeing a proliferation of many new applications, video clips, music files, cloud computing, online backups, storage and more. All this creates what might be called an "exapotope". Today, a single Cisco TelePresence application generates more traffic than the entire World Wide Web at the beginning of this millennium.
- More than a trillion devices will be connected to the Internet soon. These will not only be cell phones, but also many office controllers - from temperature sensors to devices that read electronic badges. People will outsource more and more to networks intellectual functions, and as a result, networks will gain many new capabilities, including translation from one language to another.
- Tablet devices like the iPad will become more widespread. The person will be able to fold the computer and put it in his pocket. Glass windows will acquire the function of displays.
- By 2012 existing pico-projectors will use gigabit technology for wireless transmission data embedded in mobile devices. As a result, people will be able to use mobile devices from high-speed connection and features for displaying images in real size for video conferencing anywhere - at home, on board an aircraft, etc. In addition, with the help of a pico projector, a person will be able to project a keyboard cell phone on your palm and type on it desired number... Any surface can become a computing device.
- Augmented reality (Augmented Reality - virtual computer images that increase the size of real objects) is developing by leaps and bounds and in five years will become the leading technology in the world of "white collars". Imagine conference participants with "clouds" hanging over their heads with their names, open questions, unsolved problems, and so on. The same information can be seen in a few years on the lenses of ordinary glasses, and in another 10 years - on contact lenses.
- The offices will have "virtual assistants" able to find necessary information and deal with the information "exapotope". Soon, employees will be able to communicate with such "virtual assistants", exchanging electronic and voice messages... This will relieve workers in flesh and blood from a range of routine responsibilities, allowing them to focus on more creative tasks. Robots already have more endurance and quick wits than living people, and therefore we will increasingly see them in the workplace.
- Human-machine interfaces. There is already a $ 80 MindFlex game on the market. Those who play it attach to their heads small device and by the power of thought they move the ball along the screen maze. In addition, humans use the power of thought to manipulate artificial limbs, and such a limb does not have to be physically attached to the human body. Now imagine a New York doctor who remotely operates on a person on the other side of the continent.
- According to the chief futurologist of the consulting division of the company
