On Wednesday September 29, the Center for Science Writing organized a presentation from astronomer and author Caleb Scharf. Scharf, the current director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University, recently published his book The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life’s Unending Algorithm.
Data is an integral part of humanity, to the extent that it is stored in our genes. While it is easy to understand how this biological information gets passed down through generations, there is so much information that exists outside the human body which must be managed. Over time, humans learned to pass down information. This was done through cave paintings, hieroglyphics, and alphabets. This data extends beyond literature; information is also externalized in sheet music, quipus, and more recently, binary and coding.
All this data that is stored outside of human cells composes what Scharf calls the dataome. The dataome can be thought of as a living system that is within a symbiotic relationship with society. It provides extraordinary advantages to humanity, as it allows data from past generations to be passed down and improved upon. There is far too much information within society for one person to hold, so the dataome helps prevent information from being lost due to limited memory and death. But all this information is burdensome.
Scharf uses the information produced by William Shakespeare as an example. His writing was prolific and is still relevant in society, even many years after his death. In his life, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, totaling 835,997 words. These plays have been reproduced into over 4 million books, and have also been transformed into movies, e-books, trinkets, and more. Creating these manifestations of the plays requires energy. It is estimated that to make one sheet of paper, it requires 5 grams of coal, which adds up quickly when you look at the quantity of Shakespeare’s plays. This means that there is a large environmental cost to storing Shakespeare’s work within the dataome.
And that is not even the extent to which energy is required. Physical labor goes into the production and distribution of hardcopies, and it even requires work to just pick up a book. Then, while reading the book, neural energy is used in understanding and processing the contents within. This also requires energy, which further extends the burden of Shakespeare’s work within the dataome.
Shakespeare is just a small snippet of what humans are storing in the dataome. Humans generate over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and this pace is accelerating. To continue storing all this information and more, Scharf says we have two options: either drastically improve storage or create more energy to keep up with the storage.
There are serious environmental repercussions to increasing energy storage. Even if there was a shift towards cleaner energy, it would still be extremely difficult to generate the amount needed in the time required. There will be a need to remove the extraneous data from the dataome, and humans will have to seriously reevaluate how they store and utilize data.
Professor John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science writing, asked Scharf if we had anything to be optimistic about. “Anything that helps us understand our nature has to be a positive.” Even though the dataome is far from perfect, it is still a necessary part of society that will need to evolve along with humanity.
To further explore humanity’s relationship with information, Scharf further explores these topics and more in his book.
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