Case Study: The Doubling of Information

1. We all seem awash in too much information to the point it has become a matter of concern - it has exploded, we're drowning in it. As a group, discuss what you know about this concept (if anything) before turning the page. Note some points made in the discussion. What questions do you still have?

2. Examine the citations and excerpts or abstracts attached. Do you have any new information to add to what you already knew? Are there some surprises?

3. As you examined each citation, what "markers" helped you decide whether a source would be useful for understanding this issue or not? Make a list of markers you used to evaluate each source. Which are the most difficult of these markers for non-specialists to understand and apply?

4. Who are some of the apparent claims-makers in the formation of this social issue; that is, who might benefit from anxiety about the information explosion?

5. The final selection in this set of excerpts says many of the original publications about the growth of information present no evidence to back up their claims, yet some of those sources have been quoted repeatedly. How can we help students question claims that appear to be “documented” when the source they are drawn from is faulty?

Citations and Excerpts

Richard Saul Wurman. Information Anxiety. New York: Doubleday, 1989: 32.
A weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England. . . . [no evidence is provided for this claim - it's simply stated as fact.]

Todd Oppenheimer. "Reality Bytes: We Listen in on the New-Media Moguls - and They're Nervous." Columbia Journalism Review 35.3 (Sept.-Oct. 1996): 40+.
[Quoting Barry Diller]. . . "Archivists estimate that the collective sum of all printed knowledge is doubling every four years. More information has been produced in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand," he said. "And it's only getting faster and more out of control.

David Shenk. Data Smog. Rev. and updated ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998: 30.
With information production not only increasing, but accelerating, there is no sign that processing will ever catch up. We have quite suddenly mutated into a radically different culture, a civilization that trades in and survives on stylized communication . . .

How much information in our midst is useful, and how much of it gets in the way? What is our signal to noise ration?

We know that the ratio has diminished of late, and that the character of information has changed: As we accrue more and more of it, information has emerged not only as a currency, but also as a pollutant.

William J. Clinton. Remarks by the President to the National Association of Attorneys General. March 12, 1998. (retrieved 23 Dec. 2004).
The sheer volume of knowledge is doubling every five years now. We are literally, because of human genome research we are literally solving problems in a matter of days that took years to solve not long before I took office. The worldwide web is growing by something like 65,000 web sites an hour now. When I took office, there were 50—(laughter)—50. Think about that. Just a little over five years ago the web was the province of a handful of scientists, physicists, started by a government research project in the Defense Department. The government, quite properly, having done the basic research and getting it up and going, got out of the way, and now it's the fastest growing organ of human interaction ever, in all of human history.

National Forum on Information Literacy. A Progress Report on Information Literacy - An Update on the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report. March 1998 (retrieved 24 Dec. 2004).
The workplace of the present and future demands a new kind of worker. In a global marketplace, data is dispatched in picoseconds and gigabits, and this deluge of information must be sorted, evaluated, and applied. When confronted by such an overload of information, most workers today tend to take the first or most easily accessed information--without any concern for the quality of that information. As a result, such poorly trained workers are costing businesses billions of dollars annually in low productivity, accidents, absenteeism, and poor product quality. There is no question about it: for today's and tomorrow's workers, the workplace is going through cataclysmic changes that very few will be prepared to participate in successfully and productively unless they are information literate. . . .

Bob Herbert. "Miracles at Warp Speed." New York Times 31 Dec. 1999: A21.
. . . "Science right now is the most powerful single force in our culture. We've got guys who are not just working on the double helix, approaching the structure that carries all of our DNA-based genetic code -- they're saying: 'Well, let's build something beyond that. Let's build our own structures.'" . . . .

Dr. Crow is helping to develop a project that will bring experts together from a wide variety of disciplines to study the implications--and, where feasible, help shape the outcomes--of scientific and technological research.

Offering an illustration of the astonishing speed of some scientific advances, Dr. Crow said, "Biological science's knowledge is doubling every 180 days."

Katherine S. Mangan. "In Revamped Library Schools, Information Trumps Books: Institutions: Curricula and New Names Reflect Student Interests and the Job Market." Chronicle of Higher Education 7 April 2000: A43. (retrieved 24 Dec. 2004).
. . . Michigan's School of Information, as it is now known, is part of a trend that is making some librarians shudder in their stacks. Increasingly, library studies are making way for specialties that train students for high-tech careers in which skills at handling and organizing vast amounts of information are in great demand. . . . "The amount of electronic information is doubling every 60 minutes," says John L. King, dean of Michigan's School of Information. . . .

General Comments. Library of Congress Cataloging Directorate. (retrieved 24 Dec. 2004). [This appears to be a transcript of e-mail communications held in connection with the Library of Congress's Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium, November 15-17, 2000.]
. . . Barbara Baruth [mailto:baruth@UWP.EDU] said:

>>According to John L. King, Dean of the University of Michigan's School of Information, the amount of electronic information doubles each hour. I'm fearful that even efforts like CORC simply can't scale to that level.<<

David Miller <dmiller@curry.edu> said:

>> Frankly, I'm extremely wary of all such statements, and there have been plenty of them. This kind of bare statistical remark tells us nothing about the nature of this "information," its context or its value. (I'd also like to know if this is based on empirical data and where that comes from, or if it's a rhetorical extrapolation.<<

It is clearly rhetorical exaggeration, unless John L. King is ignorant of the power of exponentiation. If we started this year with just one bit of information (and there was clearly more than that number), then now, about 6,000 hours later, there would be roughly 10 to the power of 1,800 bits of information. That's considerably more than the number of atoms in the universe, so there is not enough physical matter to store that amount of information.

Giles Martin, OCLC Forest Press

Al Gore. "Our Whole Future Is at Stake." [acceptance speech at Democratic National Convention, 17 August 2000] Washington Post 18 August 2000: A30.
At a time when the amount of human knowledge is doubling every five years and science and technology are advancing so rapidly, we will do bold things to make our schools the best in the world. I will fight for the single greatest commitment to education since the G.I. Bill, for revolutionary improvements in our schools, for higher standards and more accountability, to put a fully qualified teacher in every classroom, test all new teachers and give teachers the training and professional development they deserve. It's time to treat and reward teachers like the professionals that they are.

"Executive Summary." How Much Information? 2003. School of Information Management and Systems, U.C. Berkeley. 27 Oct. 2003. (retrieved 23 Dec. 2004).
We estimate that the amount of new information stored on paper, film, magnetic, and optical media has about doubled in the last three years. . . . Summary estimates show that the storage of new information has been growing at a rate of over 30% a year (upper estimate, uncompressed). There has been dramatic growth in storage of new information over the past two years in every storage medium except film. Film-based content - especially photographs – is migrating to digital media, both optical and magnetic.

"Prophecies Concerning the Last Days: Tribulations." Last Day Warriors. 2004. (retrieved 24 Dec. 2004). [A listing of Biblical prophecies with present-day examples]
Increase in speed and knowledge -Dan. 12:14

"But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase."

Knowledge is increasing in quantum leaps especially in the fields of computers and physics. . . .

Martin Raish. "Shining Some Light on the Monster Under the Bed: A Closer Look at the 'Doubling of Knowledge.'" In Musings, Meanderings, and Monsters, Too: Essays on Academic Librarianship. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2003: 145-156.
We have all heard the mantra: knowledge is doubling every (insert you favorite number here) . . . I have no doubt that the amount of data is growing at an astounding pace, as we discover more about our natural world and create mountains of "artificial data" in our man-made world. If these statements spoke of "data" instead of "knowledge" or "information" I would have a much smaller quarrel with them. . . .

This review of statements about the growth of information/knowledge has revealed a fundamental confusion about what is being measured, a crucial inability to measure whatever this might be, and a total disregard for seeking documentation instead of repeating undocumented rumors . . . Together, these factors lead me to conclude the "Knowledge is Doubling" monster is, to a large extent, more a mirage than a reality.

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