ABSTRACT SUPPORTING APPENDIX
We used more than 1,100 sources to estimate the world’s technological capacity to store, communicate and compute information. In this Supporting Appendix we outline our underlying methodological assumptions. We place large emphasis on transparency in outlining our r easoning and sources, and hope that this will facilitate replicability and future improvements to the challenging undertaking of quantifying the world’s technological information processing power. We measure storage and communication capacities in optimall y compressed bits (or bits per second), which requires three kinds of sources: (a) the quantity of installed devices, (b) the hardware capacity of those devices, and (c) the level of compression of the respective content. This last variable enables us to t ransform hardware capacity into optimally compressed bits (which approaches the entropy of the source). We measure computational capa city in MIPS, which requires (a) the quantity of installed devices, (b) the hardware capacity of those devices. Given the n ature and availability of the statistics, we measure the effective capacity in the case of communication (only those bits that are effectively transmitted), which requires statistics on effective media usage, and the installed capacity in the cases of stor age and computation (maximum installed capacity). We start by presenting some general decisions that we took while working with these statistics in Section A, and then go into the details of the sources and assumption s employed to create those data. Source s and assumptions about compression rates for storage and communication are presented in Section B; Section C cover s the case of storage, Section D communication, and Section E computation.
Please cite as: López, P., & Hilbert, M. (2012). Methodological a nd Statistical Backgroun d on The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information 2012 (online document). Retrieved from http://www.martinhilbert.net/WorldInfoC apacity.html
Download (PDF, Unknown)
