I was reading this article by amazon and was quite intrigued by it
Knowledge Doubling Curve The Knowledge Doubling Curve was first mentioned by Buckminster Fuller in 1982 in his book “Critical Path”. He had noticed that until 1900, human knowledge approximately doubled every century linearly. By 1945, it was doubling every 25 years, and by 1982, it was doubling every 12-13 months. According to an estimate by IBM, human knowledge will be doubling every 12 hours in the year 2020. This is represented by the Knowledge Doubling Curve.
Half-Life of Knowledge An even larger problem is that knowledge is becoming outdated or irrelevant faster than ever before. This phenomenon is known as the half-life of knowledge, the amount of time it takes for knowledge to lose half its value. The half-life of knowledge is shrinking for many domains such as science, technology, marketing, and finance. Information that was valuable 10 years ago for 12 months is estimated to be valid for six months today. For students in a four-year technical degree means that half of what they learn in their freshmen year will be outdated by their junior year. The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not even exist in 2004. This means that knowledge will cycle from being non-existent to prominent and back to irrelevant within a brief interval of time. As mankind progress rapidly, information will keep on accumulating, and, over the years, result in a vast amount of data that we wouldn’t know what to do with.
