8 research outputs found
Neuropsychological constraints to human data production on a global scale
Which are the factors underlying human information production on a global
level? In order to gain an insight into this question we study a corpus of
252-633 Million publicly available data files on the Internet corresponding to
an overall storage volume of 284-675 Terabytes. Analyzing the file size
distribution for several distinct data types we find indications that the
neuropsychological capacity of the human brain to process and record
information may constitute the dominant limiting factor for the overall growth
of globally stored information, with real-world economic constraints having
only a negligible influence. This supposition draws support from the
observation that the files size distributions follow a power law for data
without a time component, like images, and a log-normal distribution for
multimedia files, for which time is a defining qualia.Comment: to be published in: European Physical Journal
Entrenched time delays versus accelerating opinion dynamics: are advanced democracies inherently unstable?
Modern societies face the challenge that the time scale of opinion formation
is continuously accelerating in contrast to the time scale of political
decision making. With the latter remaining of the order of the election cycle
we examine here the case that the political state of a society is determined by
the continuously evolving values of the electorate. Given this assumption we
show that the time lags inherent in the election cycle will inevitable lead to
political instabilities for advanced democracies characterized both by an
accelerating pace of opinion dynamics and by high sensibilities (political
correctness) to deviations from mainstream values. Our result is based on the
observation that dynamical systems become generically unstable whenever time
delays become comparable to the time it takes to adapt to the steady state. The
time needed to recover from external shocks grows in addition dramatically
close to the transition. Our estimates for the order of magnitude of the
involved time scales indicate that socio-political instabilities may develop
once the aggregate time scale for the evolution of the political values of the
electorate falls below 7-15 months.Comment: European Physical Journal B (in press