Are Humans losing their History.
This essay sets out to quantify the Human loss of History in 2015.
It compares the ability of Human Electromagnetic, Electrochemical, Organic Memory and their Technological Memory ability to establish the loss of data.
Human Memory
Total Human Brain Storage
= 0.001 exabytes
= 1,000,000,000 megabytes
= approx. 4,000 average hard drives.
Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/
Short Term Memory Duration
= 10 seconds to 1 minute.
Source: http://www.human-memory.net/types_short.html
Source: Wikipedia and associated refs. Russell Revlin (24 February 2012).
Cognition: Theory and Practice. Worth Publishers.
Loss of Short Term Memory
= 100%
Long Term Memory Duration
= 100 years, a lifetime.
Source: http://www.human-memory.net/types_long.html
Loss of Short Term Memory
= variable but inevitably 100% if not documented.
Human Technological Memory
Amount of data stored in the world in 2014.
= 295 exabytes
= 295,000,000,000,000 megabytes
= 295,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
= 1,200,000,000 average hard drives.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12419672
Amount of data broadcast in the world in 2014
= 2 zettabytes
= 2,000 exabytes
= 2,000,000,000,000,000 megabytes
= 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
= 8,135,593,220 average hard drives
= 175 newspapers per person, per day.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12419672
Amount of data deleted or lost in the world in 2014
= 24,000,000 emails worth of data at 100kb per email.
= 0.0000024 exabytes
= 2,400,000 megabytes
= 2,400,000,000,000 bytes
= 10 average hard drives
Source: http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2014/20141202-01.htm Dec. 2014
Conclusions
Humans loose more data during missed sensory experience and short term memory storage than they do through long term, synaptic memory and technological data storage.
This loss may be a driving force behind the development of artificial tools for data retrieval such as time measurement, geometry, astronomy, language, signs, symbols, pictograms, ideograms, alphabets, literature, music, dance, art, sculpture, architecture, artefacts, tools, products, mathematics and computers.
The efficiency of the current data retrieval allows for only 0.000000813559322% loss of Human technical memory data globally in 2014.
Humans are not losing their history that they have recorded they are losing their sensory interaction with the Universe that they have ignored.
Ian K Whittaker
Websites:
https://sites.google.com/site/architecturearticles
Email: iankwhittaker@gmail.com
02/03/2015
14/10/2020
351 words over 2 pages