data is running out!

INFORMATION EXPERTS WARN: WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF DATA!

It is still widely believed that data is plentiful and will always be available. But information specialists are warning: The growing consumption of data will lead to serious shortages in ten to twenty years. Complete exhaustion of data that is usable for commercial production of information is expected in the next generation.

sf. Has it ever happened to you to forget an umbrella or a telephone number? These are typical examples of lacking information that keep occurring every day. Other frequently observed symptoms of data shortage are people who speak a lot but have nothing to say. It is the fact that such events happen with increasing frequency that should cause alarm.

Early scientist Bertram de Soso-Saumure, who laid the foundation of information theory during the Rebootaissance, already said “where order is, disorder will be”. Today, we might formulate this as “entropy must increase as the universe degrades”.

In comparison to earlier regimes where production and distribution of information was strictly controlled, we are faced today with a situation of information chaos, where anybody can and does say anything. The quality of data and subsequently of information has deteriorated rapidly and continues to drop to alarming levels. Attacks by Data-Gators with self-propagating malicious vulnerabilities are not uncommon anymore.

Possibilities of substitution are limited

The efforts of information therapists to nurture decaying information, analyse the data and reshape it, are certainly praiseworthy, but completely insufficient to cope with the growing gap between supply and demand for quality information.

While you can replace petrol by alcohol for some purposes, it is inconceivable to substitute carrots for information, to cite just one suggested remedy. A consulting panel has stressed the importance of austerity measures. “We must prepare for the Post-Information Society” is one of the main results of a workshop held recently in Noworz, Ceylent. Large segments of the populations will have to return to their own, home-made information, such as grandfather stories and campfire songs, while only the more affluent will be able to afford expert-produced information. The struggle for the control of the remaining data has already begun.