Oberron

No spark is too small to fire a dream

Kardashev and Processing Scaling

category: essay



Postulat: Human Society develops with: * new ways to multiply human processing intelligence (language, alphabet, print, computing, ... * new ways to multiply human muscular power (fire, animal power, steam, electricity, .... * above two lines of development can develop independantly but * when both have reached a new level, society makes a leap: * stone age=language and fire * iron age=writing and animal power * ...

Reading:

doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0971-179

Suppose we now consider a totally nonredundant television broadcast: one in which each dot is un correlated with the other dots on the same frame and
each frame is unrelated to other frames. No human being could possibly absorb information from a television tube at such a rate. Even if the material being
broadcast were a typical printed page (and on such a page there is a great deal of correlation between dots), it would take a person of reasonable skills about
60 seconds to absorb the information from one frame. Thus we can estimate the probable bit rate required to engage a human being in intellectual attention
as being **less than 10^4 bits per second**
With a world population of less than five billion, the entire human race could have its information channels individually serviced and saturated with a bit rate
of 5 X 10^13, very much less than the 10^38 bits per second available. 
The total muscle-power output of the human race is estimated to be about 3 X10^9 megawatt-hours per year (somewhat less than one megawatt-hour per person
per year).