Data vs Words

Bowman inside H.A.L., 2001 A Space Oddyssey

My wife just showed me a text message that I had sent to her last summer. In it, I noted (on good authority - I'll provide the source later) that some number crunchers (or word munchers?) have calculated that we humans created more data in 2009 than we have in all of our previous 5000 years combined. That's a lot of words, numbers and the stuff that holds them together.

Brings to mind 2001: A Space Oddessey, by Arthur C. Clarke. In the prologue, he tells us of the civilization that created the Monoliths, and how they began to externalize their consciousnesses with the aid of technological devices - robot parts for the body and hard drives for the mind, if you will. Could the internet be the beginning of some similar kind of process for us?

A lot has also been said recently of the effects that information technology will have on our memory, thought processes and such, but if the above fact is correct, then either we created an awful lot of rubbish in 2009 or the human race has been mighty lazy for the last five millennia. I would tend toward the former - God only knows the depths of the murkier side of the internet. Anyway, just a thought...

PS. the Big Day was an absolute success: everything went brilliantly, the wife was stunning and Yours Truly is now a very happily married man!