Amazing Exponentials at Work

By | December 14, 2004
3 Comments

Recently Phil spoke about the coming portability of all knowledge:

[My iPod] holds 20 gigabytes of memory, or about 500 songs. Last year’s model could hold only 10 gigabytes, about 250 songs. If I were using my iPod to hold text rather than music, it could hold about 20,000 books. And at the rate its capacity is growing, by the year 2020 my little iPod could hold the entire Library of Congress — text, graphics, everything.

Imagine what life will be like for a college student in the year 2020. Imagine what it will be like for a first grader! This thing is smaller and lighter than any single textbook any of us ever had to lug to school. Let me pass it around. Imagine holding virtually all human knowledge in the palm of your hand.

With the 40 gig iPod now available, storage capacity seems to be on schedule. Digital availability is on the way too:

Google, the operator of the world’s most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with [Oxford University, Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library] to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.

The libraries are bringing their information to the table. Google is offering the money, expertise, and manpower necessary to digitize and electronically catalog these collections.

“Within two decades, most of the world’s knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today,” said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University’s head librarian.

Two decades? I’m betting it’s closer to 15 years.

  • http://www.resurrectionsong.com/ zombyboy

    This is exciting me in more ways than I can express. The idea that in a few years I could carry around an entire library of knowledge in my pocket, perhaps supplementing it regularly with downloaded periodicals and purchased books, and top it off with the music that I want to listen to while I’m busy researching information–well, that sounds like heaven to me.

    Of course, by itself the iPod or a similar item will only be the store of knowledge–I’ll want something with a larger screen for actually reading the documents. I also hope that screen technology continues to improve so that reading a screen becomes as easy on the eyes as reading a printed document.

  • AndrewS

    I agree with zombyboy about needing a decent reader. I’ve been using my wife’s iPaq to do some reading recently, and it definitely falls short of acceptable. The only reason I keep using it is because I don’t have anything better.

    Something with a screen the size of a paperback book, longer battery life than the iPaq’s handful of hours, preferably a bit lighter.

    Ah, well. It should arrive before too long. Although I’ve been thinking that about electronic books for years now, so what do I know?

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Zombyboy and Andrew:

    The technology to give you a decent screen for reading is available, but these devices, so far, are primarily for music. So they skimp on the screen. This is about to change.

    A few devices in the upper end of this market have other media in mind. Some play MP4 videos. A decent screen for watching videos ought to be better for reading too.

    These devices may someday use something closer to electronic paper:

    http://www2.parc.com/dhl/projects/gyricon/

    When computers first became available for normal homes and offices they were used primarily as typewriter replacements. Their use in creating collaborative works (or music or video, etc.) was limited by lack of imagination and by lack of connection.

    That won’t be the case with these reader devices. We know now what computers connected to the Internet are capable of (at least we have a better idea today than ten years ago) – so limited imagination will be less of a problem. And these handheld devices will soon be connected to broadband wifi – probably all the time.

    Once this happens, it will change how we use the printed word. We will interact with these works. Books, particularly nonfiction, will be less like something that gathers dust on a shelf and more like an ongoing conversation.