One Month Progress Report

Well, this weblog has now been up for 30 days. I had actually intended to do all the basic reseach in this time frame, but life has somehow interfered. A major reorganisation at work has slowed me down.

Nonetheless, we've managed to explore the growth in human knowledge in a number of areas, so let's recapitulate:

1. We do find a doubling of the evidence of human knowledge (journal publications and patents) in some sectors, such as nanotechnology and global warming, new fields that double from a low base. I'm tempted to label this the Manhattan Project effect, but I'm not going to do that until I study that sector since 1945.
2. We do not see a doubling in areas with a longer time series, such as astrophysics or the study of Mars, although there are periods of impressive growth in each.
3. In some areas, we see different trends for patents as opposed to journal publications. For example, in epidemiology we see an 8.85% CAGR in journal publications in the recent past, while patents have grown by 22.76% annually since 1987.
4. We do see evidence that human knowledge is available to twice as many people, and that has grown at a rate that more than doubles every five years. (Just looking at the growth of Wikipedia and the numbers of people connected to the Internet makes that fairly obvious).
5. We do not see evidence that the number of scientists and researchers doubles every five years, and it is not at all obvious that emerging country growth is making up for a slowdown or actual decline in OECD numbers.

But there's a lot more work to do, and any of those five points could change. I'm having fun doing this, so we'll just carry on.