The Knowledge Doubling Curve

Back in the 1980s Buckminster Fuller created the “Knowledge Doubling Curve.” Industry Tap writes, “Until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Today things are not as simple as different types of knowledge have different rates of growth. . . . But on average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months.” And that rate will increase exponentially. IBM theorizes it could someday become every 12 hours.

Makes me tired just thinking about it.

The Renaissance genius Sir Francis Bacon was thought to be the last person who knew everything a person could know–at least in a European nation in 1600.

Now we’re lost in the overabundance of information.

Where is God in this picture? He would either already know everything there is to know–and everything there will be to know. Or he would potentially know everything that may be created or developed by people.

Humans have such amazing potential, and it rises from our being created in his image.

One great challenge is to discern what’s relevant from what’s not. Most of us do that automatically, filtering out whatever is not of interest or benefit to us. More than that we must discern what’s important, also a task relative to our own interests. But if we include God as being important, we gain an objective and stable foundation on which to function.

The great irony is so much ever-increasing knowledge will never be as important as relationship–both to other people and to God. It’s noteworthy (and relieving) that relationship, aside from the superficiality of social networking, will remain more or less the same until the end times. It will change only in quality.

How are your relationships?

—
Photo credit: Atulvermabhai, stockfreeimages.com