The information explosion is a threat to modern civilization. Information explosion: formation and development Information and technical explosion and its main stages

(Ursul A.D.). Stanislaw Lem described this problem and the cultural inflation it caused in “Summa Technologiae” (1964), repeating it several times later (for example, satirically in “Perikalypse” from the collection “Absolute Emptiness”, 1971).

Civilizational trends in the development of the information society are characterized by the fact that in the city humanity produced 18∙10 18 bytes of information (18 Exabytes). Over the past five years, humanity has produced more information than in all previous history. The volume of information in the world increases annually by 30%. On average, 2.5∙10 8 bytes are produced per person per year in the world.

According to statistics, the volume of digital information doubles every eighteen months. For the most part (up to 95%) this flow consists of unstructured data (only 5% is made up of various databases - structured information in one way or another).

Research issue

The following are being developed: methodology and statistics for measuring information and information loads in society, regulation by federal legislation of the safe content of information.

The information explosion is fraught with no less danger than the demographic explosion. According to Malthus, humanity as a producer lags behind itself as a consumer, that is, we are talking about the relationship between the total biological mass and the total economic product of humanity. But in competition with itself, humanity still has much better chances than an individual in competition with all of humanity. As it turns out by the beginning of the third millennium, the main resources of society are not industrial or agricultural, but information. If the material production of humanity lags behind its own material needs, then the information consumption of the individual lags even more behind the information production of humanity. This is not a crisis of overpopulation, but of misunderstanding, a crisis of tribal identity. Humanity can feed itself - but can it understand itself, grasp with the mind of the individual what is created by the mind of the species? Will a person's biologically measured lifespan be enough to become human?

- M. N. Epstein, “Information explosion and postmodern trauma”

see also

• Information overload/Information noise

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Notes

An excerpt characterizing the Information Explosion

In addition to the general feeling of alienation from all people, Natasha at this time experienced a special feeling of alienation from her family. All her own: father, mother, Sonya, were so close to her, familiar, so everyday that all their words and feelings seemed to her an insult to the world in which she lived Lately, and she was not only indifferent, but looked at them with hostility. She heard Dunyasha’s words about Pyotr Ilyich, about misfortune, but did not understand them.
“What kind of misfortune do they have there, what kind of misfortune can there be? Everything they have is old, familiar and calm,” Natasha mentally said to herself.
When she entered the hall, the father was quickly leaving the countess's room. His face was wrinkled and wet with tears. He apparently ran out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were crushing him. Seeing Natasha, he desperately waved his hands and burst into painful, convulsive sobs that distorted his round, soft face.
- Pe... Petya... Come, come, she... she... is calling... - And he, sobbing like a child, quickly mincing with weakened legs, walked up to the chair and fell almost on it, covering his face with his hands.
Suddenly how electricity ran through Natasha's entire being. Something hit her terribly painfully in the heart. She felt terrible pain; It seemed to her that something was being torn away from her and that she was dying. But following the pain, she felt an instant release from the ban on life that lay on her. Seeing her father and hearing her mother’s terrible, rude cry from behind the door, she instantly forgot herself and her grief. She ran up to her father, but he, helplessly waving his hand, pointed to her mother’s door. Princess Marya, pale, with a trembling lower jaw, came out of the door and took Natasha by the hand, saying something to her. Natasha didn’t see or hear her. She entered the door with quick steps, stopped for a moment, as if in a struggle with herself, and ran up to her mother.
The Countess lay on an armchair, stretching out strangely awkwardly, and banging her head against the wall. Sonya and the girls held her hands.
“Natasha, Natasha!..” shouted the countess. - It’s not true, it’s not true... He’s lying... Natasha! – she screamed, pushing those around her away. - Go away, everyone, it’s not true! Killed!.. ha ha ha ha!.. not true!
Natasha knelt on the chair, bent over her mother, hugged her, lifted her with unexpected strength, turned her face towards her and pressed herself against her.
- Mama!.. darling!.. I’m here, my friend. “Mama,” she whispered to her, without stopping for a second.
She did not let her mother go, gently struggled with her, demanded a pillow, water, unbuttoned and tore her mother’s dress.
“My friend, my dear... mamma, darling,” she whispered incessantly, kissing her head, hands, face and feeling how uncontrollably her tears flowed in streams, tickling her nose and cheeks.
The Countess squeezed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes and fell silent for a moment. Suddenly she stood up with unusual speed, looked around senselessly and, seeing Natasha, began squeezing her head with all her might. Then she turned her face, wrinkled in pain, towards her and peered at it for a long time.
“Natasha, you love me,” she said in a quiet, trusting whisper. - Natasha, won’t you deceive me? Will you tell me the whole truth?

Constant increase in the speed and volume of publications (volume of information) on a planetary scale.

M.N. Epstein quite rightly asserts that “The information explosion is fraught with no less danger than the demographic explosion. According to Malthus, humanity as a producer lags behind itself as a consumer, that is, we are talking about the ratio of the total biological mass and the total economic product of humanity. But in competition with itself, humanity still has much better chances than an individual in competition with all of humanity. As it turns out by the beginning of the third millennium, the main resources of society are not industrial or agricultural, but information. If the material production of humanity lags behind its own material needs, then the information consumption of an individual lags even more behind the information production of humanity. This is not a crisis of overpopulation, but of misunderstanding, a crisis of tribal identity. Humanity can feed itself, but can it understand itself, grasp with the mind of the individual what is created by the mind of the species? Will a person’s biologically measured lifespan be enough to become human?” (It depends on who - Gastello, for example, a little over twenty years was enough for this).”

Although this psychedelic and eschatological work is entirely built on false philosophical premises and on the psychology of spiritual “dismemberment”, one of its provisions has a specific meaning, of course, not as applied to a person who is not involved in the manipulations of the information war, but applies specifically to the operator information weapons systems. It consists in the fact that if such an operator is calculated by the opposing party and becomes a virtual target of the enemy, then exceeding the rate of loading him with supposedly significant, but heterogeneous information at a rate above a certain level will inevitably lead to disruption of his ability to control the combat information machine.

Revolution in modern information technology has three main features, mainly related to temporal (time) factors.

Firstly, regardless of the spatial factor, information transfer occurs faster (ij< 1 мс), чем осознание оператором самого факта её получения (у военного лётчика-испытателя т 2 >200 ms), especially the awareness of the significance of its content.

Secondly, an additional factor in the temporary lag in realizing the significance of the information received is the assessment of its congruence (replenishment of knowledge) or incongruence (new knowledge) with the reference system of archival data, as well as checking its relevance to the tasks assigned to a specific operator. This factor has a vital important when processing foreign policy and military-political information. This primarily applies to the Internet as a network information resource, where objective and/or meaningful information is generously diluted with outright misinformation, provocative and subversive (especially in the field of culture and social processes) information messages, such, for example, as the mentioned article by the postmodernist Kulturtregger.

And finally, thirdly, the extensive factor is of great importance, when the cross-section of the flow of relevant information received per unit of time (other information can be eliminated technical means) exceeds the operator's visibility. In this case, there is a need to introduce into information processing technology a slow process of ranking incoming information according to its significance in order to narrow the field of view according to the semantic and semantic criteria embedded in the computer.

Basically, technical capabilities Modern computer technology (for example, the European super-MUK - with a speed of 4.9-10 15 bits" 1, the placement of which required the construction of a special building) make it possible to cope with all the noted types of temporal factors. However, in the foreseeable future it is difficult to hope to obtain the necessary and sufficient software to solve the entire range of problems arising in connection with these factors, s and if we cannot completely trust the operator, then we certainly will not. we can afford to trust artificial intelligence self-learning computer. Although in the understanding of cybernetics the human operator is an unformalizable factor, which reduces the reliability of the information and computing structure and increases the risk of system failure, the participation of the operator is at the present stage of development of computer systems the only guarantee of ensuring their operability in the event of an information attack or the occurrence of another non-formalizable factor provoked from outside, that is, a factor reducing the vulnerability of an element information system in conditions of information war.

It is absolutely clear that at present, in the conditions of the temporal information revolution, what comes to the fore is not the speed of information transfer in the global information field, since it is already orders of magnitude ahead of the speed of awareness of its receipt, but the speed of its processing and provision to decision makers, in a reliable, reliable and easy-to-understand manner.

A palatable solution to emerging problems technologically and logistically can be achieved by implementing a number of measures, primarily the following:

• transition from relay race to fan transmission of strategic information, while the strategic nature is determined according to specified criteria (source of information, key semantic patterns, etc.) by special program blocks;
• creation of a system of independent online and registered (for subsequent analysis of the nature and causes of the error) control of the non-formalizable factor (operator);
• development of a system for instant (parallel) access to relevant archival data;
• the creation, on the basis of a modern self-learning supercomputer, preferably of national production (the importance of this factor will be assessed in subsequent sections of the work), of a situational assessment center and distribution of relevant information across the hierarchical structures of public administration.

The choice of these activities is, of course, neither the only nor the best - it is this moment optimal in terms of accessibility and operational feasibility of adaptation measures.

T.D. TULESHOV, V.N. SPECTOR

The accelerated development of production was naturally accompanied by a corresponding increase and renewal of the amount of knowledge accumulated by mankind. D. Martin, one of the leading experts in the field of information processing, states that “... by 1800 the total amount of human knowledge doubled every 50 years, by 1950 it doubled every 10 years, and by 1970 - every 5 years.” . Some analysts believe that this period is currently only 2-3 years. The avalanche-like growth of information flows, which began in the 19th century, by the middle of the 20th century led to the fact that people lost the ability to navigate the sea of ​​information and process it effectively, since even a simple search for the necessary information had to expend very significant efforts. And this despite the fact that a significant proportion of people have already been involved in the labor process directly related to information processing. According to a number of American researchers, by the middle of the 20th century, more than 30% of the working population (accountants, postal workers, bank workers, etc.) were involved in the information sphere of work in the United States. The situation that arose was once called an “information explosion.” By the end of the 20th century, information became the main subject of labor in social production in industrialized countries. And the tendency to transfer labor resources from the material sphere to the sphere one way or another related to information processing is steadily strengthening throughout the world.

The emergence of computers

So, by the middle of the 20th century, humanity faced the problem of curbing the “raging” information disaster, when information becomes inaccessible only because there is an extremely large amount of it and finding the necessary data is very, very difficult.

By this time (as if by order), the technical conditions for the production of software-controlled computers were created, which were implemented in the electromechanical computers mentioned above. However, mechanical movements - an integral part of the implementation of computational operations in mechanical and electromechanical machines - significantly limited their performance. For example, the fastest relay machine “RVM-1”, which was built in the 50s of the 20th century in the USSR under the leadership of N.I. Bessonov, performed a multiplication operation in 0.05 s (20 multiplications per second).

That is, the RVM-1 was only 14 times faster than the Mark-2. This level of performance did not satisfy the practical needs even of that time. Only completely electronic, that is, excluding mechanical movements during the calculation process and, therefore, inertia-free devices could solve the problem of the speed of computers. The beginning of the latest electronic stage in the development of information processing tools dates back to the forties of the 20th century. In 1937-1942 in the USA, under the leadership of J. Atanasoff and K. Berry, the first fully electronic machine “ABC” (Atanasoff-Berry Computer) was built, containing about 600 incandescent electronic lamps. But this machine could only perform addition and subtraction operations. The first computer in the full sense of the word i - a universal program-controlled Electronic Computing Machine (the corresponding term of English origin is a computer) was developed in 1943-1945 at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA under the leadership of D. Mauchli and P. Eckert. This machine was called “ENIAC” - Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer - electronic digital integrator and computer. It weighed 30 tons, its height was 6 meters, and its area was 120 square meters. The machine consisted of 18 thousand incandescent electronic lamps and performed approximately 5 thousand

arithmetic operations per second (compare with 20 operations per second for the electromechanical machine “RVM-1”), and flexible cables with plugs inserted into the required connectors. Therefore, any changes in the program required a lot of effort and time. The outstanding mathematician John von Neumann, analyzing the work of the first computers, came to the conclusion that it was necessary to store the running program and the data processed by this program inside the machine, in its electronic circuits, and not outside it - on punched cards, punched tapes or connectors with plugs. The first stored program machine is the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) computer, built by M. Wilkes in Great Britain in 1949.

It is customary to count down the first generation of computers from this machine.

In our country, the first computers were created around the same period. In 1947-1951, under the leadership of Academician Lebedev, the first Soviet computer was launched - MESM (Small Electronic Calculating Machine). In addition, the machines “Strela”, “Minsk”, “Ural”, BESM (Big Electronic Calculating Machine), M-2, “Mir” and some others were produced, developed under the leadership of major Soviet designers and theorists I. S. Bruk , M. A. Kartsev, B. I. Rameev, V. M. Glushkov, Yu. A. Bazilevsky.Forty-five years ago, futurologists predicted that by the year 2000, humanity would experience stagnation in scientific development, which would lead to the collapse of civilization.

The reason for such a gloomy forecast was the brewing “information explosion.”

Ants swallowing an elephant every day

Scientists first spoke about the threat of an “information explosion” in the 60s of the 20th century. It was calculated that every ten years new results in science double, and therefore the flow of information doubles every three to four years - and in information overproduction we soon we will simply drown, unable to master the flow of new information. And this will inevitably lead to stagnation in scientific development and, ultimately, to the collapse of civilization.

Let's not rush to conclusions. After all, even among scientists today there is no common opinion on this matter. Some argue that the problems have only been postponed for a while, while others argue that the disaster is happening right now, we just cannot yet fully appreciate its sad consequences. Who is right?

Waste paper factor

Our psyche, with all its unique capabilities, has limitations. It has been experimentally proven that the brain of an ordinary person is capable of perceiving and accurately processing information at a speed of no more than 25 bits per second (one word of average length contains exactly 25 bits). At such a rate of information absorption, a person can read no more than three thousand books in a lifetime. And that’s on condition that he masters 50 pages every day.
For the most persistent, such speed once allowed them to master the basic knowledge accumulated by humanity approximately by the middle of their lives. Today, unfortunately, this is no longer possible. Just a few decades ago, a new discovery or literary work immediately attracted public attention. Now, in the scientific field alone, several million books appear annually. And even if you study exclusively recent literature, then for every page you read there will be 10 thousand others, which are impossible to master. Experts even introduced the definition of “waste paper factor” - for literature that is in zero demand (we are not just talking about works of art). German researchers conducted a study of the demand for 45 thousand scientific and technical publications in one of the Berlin libraries. And it turned out that the “waste paper factor” worked for 90 percent of these books! This means that millions of pages containing the latest technical knowledge have never been read by anyone.

In a word, we have time to study only a small fraction of the constantly accumulating information - and that’s not so bad. The problem is that the information we receive tends to quickly become outdated and requires replacement.

Half-life of current knowledge

It is this humorous, but completely scientific term that denotes the period of time during which half of the information we have acquired loses its value. And it's getting shorter. Today in higher education this period is approximately seven to ten years, and in some areas (e.g. computer technologies) has been reduced to a year. This means that if you study for 12 months computer courses, then by the end of them, half of the information you received will be useless: it will be outdated. All this is reminiscent of the situation when a person climbs up a descending escalator: only a few, and even then at the cost of incredible stress, manage to maintain the required “level,” but as soon as you slow down the pace a little, and...

Today, only an “encyclopedic semi-educated person” who knows about everything, but not too deeply, can navigate the avalanche of information falling on us - and there are very few of them. Basically, wanting to avoid being “on the bottom step of the escalator,” people seek salvation in “narrow specialization” - the narrower the “narrower,” the easier it is to maintain the level. As a result, more and more people live with less and less knowledge about the world...

There is so much nonsense in the world that it’s hard to comprehend

If the brain is overstressed, it discards what is not urgently needed. Who can boast that they remember logarithms, Faraday's laws, the chemical formula of cellulose or the exact date of the reign of Vladimir II Monomakh? But we all learned this at school! We taught, but forgot - that is, we don’t know again. The situation is aggravated by the emergence of technology designed “for fools.” Devices that operate on the principle of “press a button and get the result” create the illusion of meeting the requirements of the times. We easily use technical innovations, but the subconscious reluctance to accept new information manifests itself in a kind of psychological incident: when choosing the most “sophisticated” unit, rarely does anyone try to study all its capabilities. As a result, the new product is used half-heartedly at best...
I don’t know if you have noticed that the teaching psychology has begun to change in advanced schools and institutes? Previously, pupils and students were forced to memorize everything. Today they no longer press so hard on this - it’s great if a person remembers a formula or a date, but if he easily operates with the material in which it can be found, that’s also very good. This approach seems to be a kind of solution to the problem of the “information explosion” (not to mention saving the health of our overloaded children): it is not necessary to remember everything, it is enough to learn the logic of thinking in different areas of knowledge and the ability to quickly find what you need when you need it.

Scientists offer solutions to information problems, one more fantastic than the other. For example, implanting computer microchips into the brain, which could store enormous amounts of information. However, is this really such a fantasy? With the help of implanted microchips, doctors have already managed to restore mobility to several paralyzed patients. So, it is possible that microchips with additional memory are a matter of the not-so-distant future. But no matter what scientists come up with, the reserves of our brain are still not unlimited.

It is possible that widespread alcoholism is one of the consequences of the information stress that humanity is experiencing today. This is evidenced by the results of studies conducted at the Brain Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the threat of alcoholism lies primarily in those whose brains are subject to information reloads.

Experiments conducted on rats showed that animals that had to look for food in a particularly complex maze ended up preferring alcohol to water... This is worth thinking about.

Selection natural and... unnatural

To create an encyclopedia that is capable of covering all the knowledge of mankind at every moment in time, it “will need to be republished at least annually, doubling the volume of material each time. And even if the “whole world” solves this problem, who will be able to read everything that written in such a book?

Experts see a solution in strict selection and elimination of information - and this is already happening in all areas of knowledge. Indeed, such a process, for the time being, to a certain extent mitigates the consequences of the “information explosion.” But who can count how many invaluable facts have already been forgotten and discarded just because they seemed superfluous to someone? And most importantly, who is “in charge of the truth”? We should not forget that the judges in this case are ordinary people - moderately developed, moderately limited, with their own personal and departmental interests...

Simultaneously with such artificial selection of information, the process of “natural selection” occurs. Pop culture is replacing culture. The Bible in comics and abridged versions of classic works are being released onto the market. There is an unspoken ban on television - not to say anything smart that goes beyond the knowledge of the “average” viewer. Subtle humor is replaced by "jokes", the poetry of romances - by cheap "jagi-jagi", refined speech - by slang. And radio and television presenters very naturally maintain a general low level, confusing cases and losing the thread of the conversation...

Perhaps futurologists of the 60s of the last century called all this the end of our civilization?

Until the 16th century, society’s activities were aimed at mastering matter, that is, understanding the properties of matter and making first primitive and then more complex tools.

Then, in the process of the formation of industrial society, the problem of mastering energy came to the fore - first thermal, then electrical, and finally, in the 20th century, nuclear. Mastery of energy made it possible to master the mass production of consumer values ​​and, as a result, improve people’s living standards and change the nature of their work.

At the same time, people have always had a need to express and remember information about the world around them.

In the history of the development of civilizations, several information revolutions have occurred.

First revolution associated with the invention of writing. It became possible to disseminate knowledge and preserve it for transmission to subsequent generations.

Second revolution(mid-16th century) was caused by the invention of printing, which radically changed public culture.

Third revolution(late 19th century) was due to the invention of electricity. The telegraph, telephone, and radio appeared, making it possible to quickly transmit information.

Fourth revolution(70s of the XX century) is associated with the invention of the personal computer (PC).

The creation of personal computers was predetermined by the growing volumes of information, which are difficult to cope with using traditional technologies: paper and pen. This contradiction began to negatively affect the growth rate of scientific and technological progress (STP). They began to talk about the “information explosion,” referring to the rapid growth of flows and volumes of information.

As a result, scientific and technological progress offered society a personal computer as a means for storing, processing and transmitting information.

2.5. The emergence and main stages of development of the information society

In the 80-90s, philosophers and sociologists developed the theory of the information society. This work combined the efforts of such well-known philosophers in the West as Yoshita Masuda, Zbigniew Brzezinski (some time ago a former adviser to the President of the United States), and J. Nasbitt.

But the theory of the information society of the American philosopher Alvin Toffler (b. 1928) is best known, since his acclaimed books “Future shock” (Shock from colliding with the future, 1971), “Ecospasm” (1975), “The Third Wave” (1980) we were transferred.

Toffler, like many other Western philosophers, criticized the shortcomings of industrial society, noted its crisis and signs of transition to new uniform existence, information society.

Toffler associates the transformation of society into an information society with the information revolution, which began in the second half of the twentieth century.

The information revolution, as Alvin Toffler notes, consists of two revolutions:

1) computer;

2) telecommunications.

The telecommunications revolution begins in the mid-70s and merges with the computer revolution. The computer revolution begins much earlier and proceeds in several stages.

First big stage covers the years 1930-1970, which is called the “zero cycle”. It begins with the creation of the first computers by the American physicist J. Atanasov and the German engineer K. Zuse.

At this stage, in 1951, the first commercial computer UNIVAC-1 was created (it weighed 30 tons, contained 18 thousand lamps and performed 5 thousand operations per second). Second significant stage The computer revolution begins with the creation of the first personal computers and their mass production.

The telecommunications revolution is associated with the creation

a) fiber optic technologies;

b) satellite technologies.

The confluence of computer and telecommunications technologies has created many new products and services in the market. The information and telecommunications industry has today become a key sector of the economy of developed countries.

Developed countries prefer to import consumer goods, but export products of the information industry, and earn national wealth from their sale.

Information technology is expensive, much more expensive than consumer goods, which ensures that developed countries continue to have a high standard of living, significantly higher than that of developing countries.

In addition, leadership in information technology gives them the opportunity to continue to claim political leadership in the world.

For example, the United States is one of the recognized leaders in world politics and controls more than 40% of the information technology trade market.

The United States has conserved its fossil resources and imports more goods than it exports, but it exports more services (especially in the field of information technology) than it imports.

The leadership in the field of informatization of the United States is understandable: 41% of all computers in the world are located there; 40% of families there own personal computers, and 20% own modems, that is, they are Internet users.

Thanks to the merger of the computer and telecommunications revolutions, it became possible to create information networks of enormous scale, even global ones. Through these networks it is possible to transmit, find and process the necessary information much faster.