We saw below that President Clinton said that human knowledge doubled every five years in at least two different speeches. We saw below that a respected German professor in Artificial Intelligence said that the number of scientific publications doubled every five years. But neither of them cited a source. I doubt if President Clinton did the research, and I can't find anything published by the German professor that deals with this. So where did it come from?
On several searches I've seen reference to UNESCO as a source of this information. And indeed, at the 11th General Conference titled Universities--Gateway to the Future, in 2000 Mahdi Elmandjra said, "Richard Knight estimates that the total knowledge of mankind doubles every seven years and adds,"90% of the present knowledge of mankind has been produced in the course of the last thirty years. But if we define knowledge as the capacity to survive on earth in a sustainable manner then 90% of human knowledge has been lost during the last 30 years."
But Richard Knight (referenced in other papers of the conference) is a professor of architecture at the University of Genoa in Italy. I cannot find anything published by him--and the quote says seven years, not five.
Where does this idea come from?
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