… Nanotechnology replicators could have population doubling times comparable with bacteria (which double, on average, every 20 minutes). Such replicators … could also be the cause of growth rates higher than ever before achieved [or imagined] by humanity.” (David A. Coutts)

“The faster you go, the shorter you are.” (Albert Einstein)

Scientists say the universe is expanding at an infinitely increasing rate, faster and faster to infinity. Coincidently, so is the world stock of information. French computer scientist Jacques Vallee has mapped the rate of information doubling from Stone Age till now.

If 1-I is the total information required about the world to create a stone axe (including complex geological knowledge and skills, understanding of animal and vegetable processes, etc.) it took 4,000,000 years for information to double and arrive at 2-I. This first doubling occurred around the year dot, at the height of the Roman Empire. Little things like literacy, empire and transport systems really sped things up. Now we could chop trees and build empires. Cool. Of course, a lot of people got whacked by the Romans, but that’s omelettes and eggs.

The next doubling, to 4-I, took just 1,500 years, to the Renaissance, with the birth of Protestantism, the age of the printing press and Leonardo. This was accompanied by some of the bloodiest wars and purges in European history, including the start of African slavery and the murder of up to 1/3 of Europe’s females and gay men by the Catholic church. More omelettes? Now we could chop, build and replicate God (not least through the development of ‘perspective’ which gives us a God’s eye view, sub-species aeternitatis, raised above our object: the world).

The next doubling, to 8-I, took a mere 250 years, to 1750, the age of reason and the rights of man, the nadir of African slavery, the American and French revolutions, the next world-wide blood-bath. Now we could chop, build, replicate God and experiment with utopias.

The next doubling, to I-16 took 150 years, to 1900, with the industrial revolution. Now we could chop, build, replicate God, experiment with utopias and harness the machine. This period saw the birth of nihilism and the death of meaning, as finally made clear to all by the event of World War One. Welcome to our world: cars, Max Plank’s first paper on quantum physics, Freud’s ‘Interpretation Of Dreams’, America’s first submarine, the first Kodak camera: modernity. Jazz was invented by a barber named Buddy Bolden down in New Orleans.

Just 50 more years to I-32. By 1950 we’d had the second world-war and the holocaust and used nukes for real, we’d had dictators, photocopiers, Gandhi, and the discovery of LSD; we’d split the atom, and Charlie Parker had expressed the mathematical bases for today’s complexity theory. The last person to know all of mathematics died in 1915.

To I-64, ten years. In 1960 there were an estimated 200,000 new mathematical theorems published annually, we had civil rights marches and tranquilizers, the first earth-orbiting space satellite was launched, using computers, and the world teetered on the brink of global annihilation with the Cuban missile crisis. A taste of things to come. And soul music and rock and roll were already the greatest force for progressive cultural change.

To I-128, seven years. By ‘67 all the world had heard of jazz, blues, soul and rock’n'roll. DNA was discovered by geneticists to be the building block of all life, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Kennedys and transatlantic direct dialing had all happened. Bell’s theorem of super-luminal non-local effects was published, demonstrating how an event here can have an instant and immediate effect billions of light-years away, billions of times faster than the speed of light. ‘Zoom’ wasn’t fast enough? We had to have ‘phwit’?

According to Bell Laboratories magazine there were already more computers on the planet than humans back in 1982. And according to Moore’s law, they double in capacity every 18 months. (Presumably Moore’s law needs rewriting if computer development follows similar exponential growth pattern to information.)

Information is doubling faster and faster, every year now, and every time it doubles there is huge upheaval and mayhem, wars and calamity, as value systems are challenged and norms uprooted. Changes of the type that once took 4,000,000 years to adjust to we now face every year. More wars on the planet than at any other time in history? Mushrooming eco-disaster? What’s the big deal? That’s normal for us now. You’d better hang on tight, you ain’t seen nothing yet, we’re just getting to the top of the rollercoaster – wait for the acceleration on the downaways!

By 2012 information will be doubling every second, and shortly thereafter every nano-second (one-millionth of a second). And for each doubling more wars, complexity and turbulence.

Mayan predictions aside, is there any hope of avoiding total entropy and disappearance up our own information derrieres? Surprisingly, yes. The quantum physicist Schrodinger gives us hope that an anti-entropic vector might cut in at the crucial moment and save us all from final meltdown. And logic dictates that every flick of the lengthening tail of crisis has the potential to set us on a different tangent, more sustainable, ethical and creative.

Two world wars and a world economy founded on conflict and destruction have put paid to a lot of the talent that might have helped us out of the hole. Most of our great leaders have been wiped out and we are left to flounder under the velvet gloved iron fist of the tyranny of mediocrity. But as long as we’re here there’s wriggle room for sanity to prevail, and because even a single point of light can fill an empty pool of darkness there is a real possibility of kickstarting a dynamic that can divert the runaway train.

Sure, the odds don’t look worth a punt. But all religion and mythology from the ancients to Hollywood suggest that we are hardwired for hope. Hope inspires vision and vision begets new narratives, new realities. That is what ‘history’ is made of. While most so-called hard-nosed gamblers (bankers, investors, corporate c-suite execs, etc.) wouldn’t bet on us making it they would bet on political and economic systems run by myopic pygmies with egos more fragile than porcelain butterfly wings. And that’s the smart money? ‘Playing smart and not being clever’!

So, how can we divert the express train? Clues abound…

… for the full article – and more – visit:
http://averyeducational.blogspot.com/2010/06/faster-you-go.html

Where is this video from? No info on the video itself (so much for going viral)…