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by taylodl
1536 days ago
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The 19th & 20th centuries have taught us how transformative knowledge is. Prior to these centuries humanity more or less haphazardly acquired new knowledge. Now we're much more principled in our acquisition and management of knowledge - in fact we've come to see that knowledge itself is a resource. What do we know about knowledge resources? For starters we know they're finite. There's only so much knowledge available to any computing node (or person). Then there's the issue of it takes energy to store, transfer, and synthesize that knowledge and those energy costs are skyrocketing. Finally, there's the very real fact that knowledge synthesis is asymptotic - there's a finite amount of knowledge to be had in total, and while quick strides can be made in getting close to that totality to close the remaining knowledge gap will require increasing amounts of energy. We closed a remarkable bit of that gap in the 19th and 20th centuries - the gaps remaining are getting really difficult to fill. This is the counterargument to innovation will solve all our problems. |
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When you combine this with birth rates below replacement level that leads society in the direction where it's a) harder to fill those gaps, and b) much less people to fill them. So, having far less bandwidth available to do that discovery/work seems to be in general a trend people don't seem to acknowledge.