Does Human Knowledge Double Every 5 Years?

Real World Consequences of These Issues

Let's try to look at real world effects of this dangerous illusion we are discovering.

The illusion is that a rapid growth in human knowledge (doubling every five years) is happening all around us, naturally and painlessly. As we hope to have shown on this weblog, human knowledge about a particular subject can increase that fast or faster, but it is always as a result of putting money, institutional resources, interested and bright people to do the research, together. It doesn't hurt to have an urgent public need (HIV) or potential private gain (nanotechnology) as a carrot.

But where these inputs are not provided, human knowledge about a subject grows at a much slower pace. Let me explain what I mean.

Click below for more...

Update and Summary

We are still 5 days short of our two-month anniversary on this weblog. I am going to try and do some more data mining before the 7th of June, but shortly after that date I am going to turn towards deeper analysis of data already collected. After the 7th, I will be doing research aimed at clarifying points brought up during the first two months' work.

What have we learned so far?

• Only 10 of 25 sectors explored are growing at a rate that would double every 5 years
• In areas that are heavily favoured by government or private industry, a sector can grow even faster than a 5-year doubling rate. But in areas that are not so favoured, growth ranges from a 10-15 year doubling rate (typically)
• In the U.S. this is correlated with an erosion of federal funding for research
• Growth in Asian knowledge engines (university enrollment, funding, patenting) does not overcome a decline in OECD states. It tracks GDP growth, and appears to be at a level that will barely sustain development in their domestic economies
• The increase in the availability of existing knowledge to more people is dramatic, and perhaps may compensate for the less-than-hoped-for growth in new knowledge.

So let's see what happens next.