[mike777]

I always thought the Hard sciences, in fact science in general was in many ways all about measuring stuff.

In reading articles about the rate of tech advancement I see a very wide range of opinion from exponential growth in this area over decades to a declining rate of growth over decades. I would think this is one area of science important to monitor or measure.

What are your opinions or sets of information on the rate of growth in technology?

Of course in Business, markets are made by mismeasuring stuff all the time. That is what makes for markets.

I can even see the importance in Bridge. Many of our forum posts are about measuring the offensive or defensive value of a hand given a set of facts. I see many of us, (me),mismeasure often.

[Gerben42]

Usually in the exact sciences you can measure things in units like seconds, Watt, millibar or whatever.

"The rate of tech advancement" is whatever you want it to be. So I think both the exponential and declining growth are right, depending on the definitions.
It's also not a meaningful quantity.

[helene_t]

The amount of knowledge, measured in bytes, is certainly growing with accelerating pace. Not sure if it's necesarily exponential, but something like that.

In terms of usefulness, returns could be diminishing, but that's harder to quantify of course.

In terms of the depth of our insight, it's also hard to quantify, but I'm optimistic.

[hotShot]

helene_t, on Aug 15 2007, 09:53 AM, said:

The amount of knowledge, measured in bytes, is certainly growing with accelerating path. Not sure if it's necesarily exponential, but something like that.

The amount of raw data measured in bytes is growing fast, but the amount of knowledge is growing much, much slower.

[mike777]

hotShot, on Aug 15 2007, 03:09 AM, said:

helene_t, on Aug 15 2007, 09:53 AM, said:

The amount of knowledge, measured in bytes, is certainly growing with accelerating path. Not sure if it's necesarily exponential, but something like that.

The amount of raw data measured in bytes is growing fast, but the amount of knowledge is growing much, much slower.

That...makes some sense if:
knowledge=random...helter skelter combos of data......
useful knowledge= some sum less than all combos of above.

[Al_U_Card]

Data - information - knowledge - awareness - understanding - enlightenment.

Its a progression that requires the freedom to access everything of interest and the intention to make use of it. This is all part of the consciousness raising that the ever-increasing surge has provoked/assisted/enabled.

Determining what you need is a pre-requisite.