Global Information Quantification
The University of California at San Diego has announced a ‘groundbreaking’ study to determine How Much Information? there is in the world. Extracts from the press release:
The “How Much Information?” study will be completed by a multi-disciplinary, multi-university faculty team supported by corporate and foundation sponsorship. The program will be undertaken at the Global Information Industry Center (GIIC) at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), with support from the Jacobs School of Engineering and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
“Experts say that we live in an information economy, but how much information is there, and do countries count and value information comparably? The previous generation of studies have reported information as countable bits and bytes, and documented large growth numbers” said IR/PS Dean Peter F. Cowhey. “The next generation of studies will count more precisely the impacts and implications of information growth, and do this internationally,” continued Cowhey.
“We have designed this research as a partnership between industry and academics to take the next steps in understanding how to think about, measure, and understand the implications of dramatic growth in digital information,” said Professor Roger Bohn of UC San Diego, co-leader of the new program. “As the costs per byte of creating, storing, and moving data fall, the amounts rise exponentially. We know that overall information technology increases productivity and human welfare, but not all information is equally valuable.” Bohn’s co-leader, Dr. James Short, noted that recent industry studies have reported larger and larger amounts of information being produced and stored in networks, companies and homes. “We will continue to document the growth in information,” Short said, “but at the end of the day we are studying how information works. How information works is about measuring and counting the uses and applications driving the massive increases in networking and data growth, allowing businesses and consumers to use information more effectively to make better decisions.”
Updates on the research will be announced over the course of the next three years, with the initial report slated for publication at the end of 2008. For more information and to view updates on the research, please visit http://giic.ucsd.edu.
The ‘previous generation of studies’ presumably includes the recent International Data Corporation report, The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011 [.pdf], to which I’ve referred before. Their research concluded that in 2007 the ‘digital universe’ consisted of 281 exabytes of data (281 billion gigabytes), 10% higher than forecast. By 2011, the total volume - if that is the right word - of data will be ten times it was in 2006.
Big numbers, but nothing close to the postulated total amount of information in the universe. If current trends continue (and I’m ignoring a few variables here, admittedly) there will be no space in the universe for our ever-increasing data production by about AD 2650 (according to Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman).
Data is not information, though…right?
“Thanks to telegraphs and modern communications, commanders are flooded with a tsunami of almost meaningless facts.” — naval manual from 1949
Correct, but the terminology depends upon who you ask. I was aware when I wrote the above that I was lazily splicing the two terms. Generally, I would say that data are the bits, and information is the meaning constructed from those bits. I find that a useful rule of thumb. Information theory doesn’t always make the distinction in those terms, preferring signal to information, and information to data. All very confusing, and I have to do a bit more work to clarify the various viewpoints before settling on something that works for me.
Love the quote - I’m still chuckling. I may have to adopt it somehow.
I always viewed it from a utilitarian perspective — data is the crap I sift through to find my information.
I’ve always found Information Theory to be pretty confusing, even though I loved reading Norbert Weiner’s essays…then again, I guess he’s cybernetics more than information theory. Dang…semantic headache already!
Weiner? I’ll have to check him out.
Data is the crap I sift through to find my information.
That’s getting back to the noise conversation we were having recently. Just to throw a spanner in the works still further, some information theory views noise as having signal value, rather than the random static we might otherwise assume it is… It’s fascinating stuff, but I’ve got no maths. Now who’s brain hurts?
There’s a great essay by Mark Pesce where he breaks down something called Perceptual Cybernetics — a phrase I haven’t come across before or since — a model that divides the entire universe into three chunks: The external world, our internal experience, and the sensory equipment that mediates between the two.
From this perspective all data “is” information to someone, but of course most data is just noise to you and me. The variable here is the nervous system of the reciever.
I recently saw this same point repeated in a critique of globalization and the “knowledge economy” which pointed out that despite the ocean of information on these Internets, it’s only information if you’ve got the background knowledge and mental models to make sense of the input.
I often think the same thing when I’m at my business partner’s house, looking at his bookshelves full of O’Reilly manuals on PHPSQLEtc. They’re technically in English, but….
The link I forgot to include:
Eye and Thou, by Mark Pesce
Thanks for the link - I’ll give it a read later. I have a feeling it’s going to be very useful. I like the re-insertion of a Gibsonian subjectivity into the definition. The whole notion of ‘cyberspace’ is something I’m going to be looking at over the summer. How to link that into global counterstrategies against kinetic radicalisation, for want of a better phrase. I read your comments over at CTLab and I really think you’ve hit on an important issue with the operational definition of radicalisation. In essence: it’s fine to be ‘radicalised’, as long as you don’t go blowing people up. Or is it? Or is blowing people OK if you’re a ‘freedom fighter’? Jeez, it’s a bag o’ badgers alright. Somehow, the definitions of ‘cyberspace’ itself, whatever it is, are relevant to this debate.