Information technology explosion and its main stages. Information explosion - a threat to modern civilization

The scientific and technological revolution that unfolded in the middle of our century in most developed industrial countries has led to a serious rethinking of the role and importance of information in the life of modern society. This was prompted by: the information explosion - an unprecedented growth in the volume of scientific and technical publications in the world; the rapid development of the information sectors of the economy of a number of leading countries of the capitalist world; the rapid growth in the production of equipment for collecting, transmitting, storing and processing data, including computers. Informatics, understood as the totality of all information connections and processes in society, has come to be regarded as an important part of the social organism. A special new science, which received the same name, is engaged in the analysis of the laws of its development and functioning. If we give a narrow definition of informatics, then this is a set of systems, forms and methods of processing, storing and transmitting information using computer technology.

Bourgeois theorists argue that at the present stage of the scientific and technological revolution, information technology and technology have become a factor determining the development of society. The higher, for example, the production of computers, the scale of their use, the more advanced is the capitalist society, the "information society", in which supposedly there is no place for antagonisms.

Bourgeois theoreticians pass off wishful thinking. Although in the developed capitalist countries the introduction of informatics, the use of computers has reached a high degree, nevertheless, one cannot speak of the advent of some new era in the development of capitalism, free from antagonisms. The spread of the achievements of scientific and technological progress under capitalism not only does not eliminate the contradictions of the society of exploitation, but deepens them and gives rise to new ones.

The modern capitalist economy is defined by bourgeois theoreticians as "mass", firstly, because its goal is the mass production of goods and services, and secondly, because the main object of the production process is matter (mass) and energy. The more material goods are produced, they believe, the richer the society. As long as capitalist society did not suffer from difficulties with raw materials and energy, it was believed that an increase in material? and energy intensity of technological processes leads to an increase in labor productivity, an acceleration in the pace of production and, consequently, to an increase in economic well-being.

But in the 1970s, the capitalist economy faced many difficulties: for the first time, the results of economic development were affected by the limited reserves of raw materials and energy. The energy crisis of 1973 and the series of commodity crises that followed it brought to life new views on the economic development of capitalist society. Now bourgeois economists have turned their eyes to the "information economy", which, in their opinion, belongs to the future. They argue that one of the components of any produced good or service, along with energy and matter, is "information". In modern conditions, they believe, when significant restrictions have arisen in the use of energy and raw materials, the most realistic way to develop production may be to increase the amount of "information" in a unit of output.

But what is meant by "information"? The meaning of this term in this case differs from the widespread interpretation of this term as knowledge, communication, or as a measure of organization for the exact sciences. For bourgeois theoreticians, “information” determines the usefulness and reliability of an article, the skillfulness of its manufacture, etc. An increase in the content of “information” in any object makes it possible to spend less raw materials and energy on its manufacture and use this object for a long time. At the same time, the manufacturer must look for ways to improve the quality of products, resources to save energy and labor costs. This may be the search for better materials, improved product design or the use of new manufacturing technology; the use of computers for information processing, the development of components and parts; the use of robots to perform repetitive mechanical operations; changing the ways of distributing finished products, etc. Microelectronics is given as an example of how “information” replaces material factors. The modern microprocessor, the most complex device, has a volume of several cubic millimeters and weighs grams. But, built into finished products, it replaces many parts and assemblies, for the production of which tens of times more materials and energy were previously spent.

“The relationship between mass and “information” is changing and will continue to change. Our prosperity depends on it, states American businessman P. Hawken, author of the book "The Economy of the Future". - The fundamental difference between the current state of the economy and the one that was 20 years ago is that the manufacturer can no longer use more energy to increase productivity. It's too expensive. Instead, he must become smarter in what he does, and the "information economy" will help him in this.

Thus, according to bourgeois theorists, the "information economy" is an economy aimed at minimizing the amount of matter and energy in the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.

But predicting a radical change in economic relations in the very near future, the same P. Hawken notes that the "information economy" does not destroy, but to a certain extent inherits what was accumulated earlier. The "mass" economy remains a part of the economic complex of the future, although its role and significance is significantly reduced. In this regard, attention is drawn to the fact that the "information economy" is no less materialistic than the "mass economy". This is reflected in the fact that raw materials, energy and material goods are beginning to be valued much higher and they are used with greater efficiency than before.

There are a number of significant flaws in all these and similar reasoning. First of all, supporters of the "information economy" seek to prove that the existing relations of production are generated by the progress of technology, and not by the ownership of the means of production. For example, the well-known American sociologist D. Bell states that the "information economy" has a completely different character than the economy of goods. And social relations within its framework are allegedly no longer determined by labor, property relations, but have a completely different character. What is it? D. Bell does not reveal its essence. He only points out that "information" is fundamentally different from other public goods in that, once produced, it becomes the public domain.

This imposes significant restrictions on the process of production of information goods and services and their exchange between producers and consumers. Information does not disappear in the product after consumption. There is an objective contradiction between the growing social nature of the production of information products and services and the privately owned form of appropriation of results. Analyzing these objective processes, D. Bell comes to the conclusion that it is necessary for capitalists to abandon the "competitive strategy" of doing business and move to cooperation, cooperation among themselves in the production of knowledge and information.

The same idea is carried out in the programmatic work of the American futurist J. Nesbit "Megatrends". Of the ten main, in his opinion, trends of our time, he puts the formation of an "information society" in the first place. He tries to prove that it is no longer capital that determines the essence of the economic relations of bourgeois society, but the process of accumulation and use of knowledge. “We are now producing knowledge on a massive scale, and this knowledge is turning into a determining force in the development of the economy,” he writes. But this statement seems rather abstract, so Nesbit calls on all economists to direct their efforts towards the creation of an "information" theory of value. But numerous attempts made in this direction in recent years by bourgeois scientists have proved fruitless.

In the arguments of the supporters of the "information economy" one can easily see a fetishism in relation to information. As academician V. G. Afanasiev notes, “the growth rate of knowledge of accumulated information is an important indicator of social progress. However, this is not the main and not the only indicator. By itself, information is not capable of increasing the production of material and cultural values. It will only be useful when it is embodied in technique and technology, in the values ​​of culture, in the knowledge and experience of people, in forms of communication, in the entire system of social relations.

In the Marxist science of society, the fact of a relative increase in information content in the gross national product of developed countries is generally recognized. It follows from the general laws of the development of society and is confirmed quite convincingly by statistics. But the social relations prevailing in this or that society are determined not by the level of their "information support", but by the complex interaction of economic, political, ideological and many other factors. Under the conditions of capitalism, information and knowledge become one of the forms of manifestation of capital as a social relation. The owner of information seeks to use it as an additional advantage in the fight against competitors, as a means of redistributing surplus value in his favor.

The very practice of computerization refutes many of the theoretical constructions of the supporters of the "information economy". Faced with the phenomenon of computerization, the institutions of bourgeois society were unable to ensure the development of new technology in the name of the interests of all members of society. Technique as a universal amplifier has once again highlighted the sharpest contradictions. Being in the hands of various economic and political groups, technology serves to further enslave both the individual and entire social groups.

2. "Electronic environment"

Computerization has given rise to new industries, types of production processes, communication systems. So, in the USA, Japan and some other countries in the 80s, a special “information infrastructure” began to form, the main elements of which are “data banks”, in which information is accumulated, computer networks of various levels, with the help of which information can be transferred to anywhere in the country, and special information companies specializing in the selection and timely provision of the necessary information to all interested. This whole set of organizations and the technical systems that support their activities was called the "electronic environment". Unlike traditional means of mass communication (press, radio, television), in which information has the form of a printed document, visual or sound image, in the "electronic environment" all information is recorded in the memory of machines in the form of unified electronic signals. They can be almost instantly transferred to the recipient's computer and only there they can find a convenient form of text, graphics, sound, etc. Such an "electronic environment" creates the opportunity to combine not only print, radio and television, but also other public information support systems - libraries, archives, information and reference systems, mail, telegraph, etc.

At the beginning of the 80s, according to Futurist magazine, there were 450 "data banks" in the United States that provided any of their clients, including through home computers, with information on a wide range of issues. In the early 70s, such banks were predominantly (90%) state institutions, in the 80s, on the contrary, private banks began to predominate. And their activities are expanding.

The practice of creating special "data banks" was especially widespread in the sphere of rental of durable goods, real estate, and credit business.

The five largest credit firms in the US have archives covering 150 million customer files. Every year, Americans make one billion visits to their doctors. And all information about their health also settles in electronic memory. Car rental companies collect data not only about the identity of their client, but also about all his movements within the country and beyond.

The existence of "data banks" certainly contributes to improving the efficiency of both individual processes and the economy of countries as a whole. Many firms constantly accumulate information about the operating conditions of their products. Built into the finished product, a microcomputer collects the required data. During periodic maintenance, the accumulated information is collected and entered into the memory of the corporation's system.

Thus, the electronic ignition system of a Cadillac car, while optimizing the operation of the engine, at the same time records the number of exceeding the permissible speed limits, violations of operating conditions by the owners, etc. Cadillac owners, representing the most prosperous strata of American society, regarded the installation of computers car as an infringement on their rights. Another example is provided by "databanks" that accumulate information about the operation of telephones. With the help of a computer, each call is recorded - who called, where, the duration of the conversation. This seemingly uninteresting information is needed to optimize the operation of the telephone network, improve the efficiency and quality of customer service. But with appropriate processing, it allows you to create a model of the telephone behavior of any subscriber. The deviation of real behavior from the model allows supervisory authorities (CIA, FBI) ​​to increase surveillance over phone owners.

Computerization has created the possibility of total surveillance in Western society. The growth in the number of "data banks" is alarming Americans. Specialists believe that multi-purpose "data banks" pose a serious threat to both the common man and large companies. The fact is that the quantitative growth of information in the electronic age is rapidly acquiring a new quality due to the possibility of moving, rearranging and centralizing data. It is not difficult to guess what consequences can be expected. If earlier, for example, federal agencies collected data about citizens independently and rarely shared it, now they have such an opportunity.

The exchange of information in modern life is in full swing. This activity has emerged in recent years as an independent sub-sector of the economy. By the beginning of the 80s, it was about 2% of the US gross national product, or about 45-50 billion dollars. More than 50 departments and departments of the federal government have highly advanced automated systems containing information about the personal lives and political views of many millions of Americans. Moreover, the possibility of data transmission over any distance, considerations of economy in processing, made it expedient to centralize information. Previously, individual organizations had the characteristics of one side of the personality, but now they can create a complete picture of the psychology of a particular person, his political views, economic situation, etc.

“When data, for example, from their administrative dossier becomes part of the dossier of the security agencies, no one, neither the person to whom it is filed, nor the new owner of the information, knows for what purpose this data will be used in the future. Moreover, the security officer may feel that everything, even the smallest details, should be recorded. In turn, the “observed person” will never know what small personal detail from his biography will tighten the knot in the testimony against him,” A. Miller, a well-known specialist in the creation of “data banks”, believes.

The systems being created are especially dangerous when they fail. There have been cases where the perpetrator data system has given out false information, resulting in innocent people thrown into prison or killed on the spot when "resisting" the police.

The data system can be created for certain repressive purposes. For example, in 1977, a now former Los Angeles district attorney founded a firm that collected information about tenants in order to convict them of unreliability. It was enough to complain about poor housing conditions, interruptions in water supply, etc., as the complainant fell into a special "black" list. And this meant that such a tenant would always and everywhere be denied renting an apartment.

The practice of maintaining "black" lists has become widespread. Thus, the new information technology becomes in the hands of the ruling classes a powerful tool to suppress any manifestations of discontent.

The needs of society for information services are growing very rapidly. Moreover, for the most part, consumers do not require “information raw materials” for reflection, but a finished product in a form that makes it possible to immediately use the information received.

Information has become a product like any other commodity. One of the reports on the exchange notes that the information network is always loaded to capacity in those situations where the exchange of information is beneficial to both parties.

The theorists of the "information society" made an attempt to interpret the fact of the creation of the "electronic environment" as a step towards equalizing the social status of various strata of bourgeois society. In the "electronic environment", they argue, every person or organization gets the opportunity to access any information. This democratizes the forms of public administration, reduces the possibility of criminal conspiracies between entrepreneurs, etc. But in real life, directly opposite trends have emerged. Today in the United States they are already talking about a new form of inequality - informational. It arises because only those who have the appropriate equipment at their disposal have the opportunity to use the "electronic environment". Since the technical potential of producers many times exceeds the capabilities of consumers, a form of information inequality arises. Manufacturers are always better informed about their customers than the latter about suppliers of goods or services.

Thus, the "electronic environment" is no longer fiction, but the realities of countries such as the United States or Japan. Where will her education lead? There is as yet no clear answer to this question, but the tendencies noted above are already a matter of concern for various sections of capitalist society.

3. Machine intelligence?

For almost 30 years, there has been an area of ​​work in programming that was almost pure science - this is the study of the problems of creating artificial intelligence. It was understood, of course, that over time, the results of the research will be applied in practice. But this period was attributed to an indefinite future.

The phrase "artificial intelligence" is now familiar to computer scientists, but still remains a mystery to the general public. Most often it is understood literally, as an artificially created mind. A considerable share in this understanding was made by science fiction writers, who populated the future society with numerous "intelligent" automata. Meanwhile, "artificial intelligence" is just a special area in computer science and computer technology, within which the task is to create technical systems that perform such work that usually requires human intellectual participation.

Currently, research and development in the field of "artificial intelligence" is aimed at creating such systems that could solve complex problems, make decisions in fuzzy situations, recognize images, understand human language, and coordinate the movement of material objects in space.

To solve the problems listed above, it is necessary that a model of the external environment be embedded in the technical system in some form, allowing the system to evaluate both the specific situations in which it finds itself and the questions that the user poses to it. In most cases, the construction of such a model is the main difficulty. Therefore, artificial intelligence systems currently being created have a limited functional purpose (diagnosing a certain group of diseases, searching for specific minerals, solving certain types of technical problems, etc.).

But often it is almost impossible to build an ideal model of reality. Then a model is introduced into the system, which is an empirical description of reality, compiled on the basis of the experience of one or several highly qualified experts. Such systems are called expert systems. In essence, these are complex computer programs, yet quite simple to use. For example, in one of the most well-known systems in operation, which allows you to determine the cause of malfunctions in automatic deep drilling, the foreman, if the drill stops, asks the question: “Why did the drill stop?” To enter this question into the machine, at the present time it is necessary to type it on the computer keyboard. But in the coming years, it will be possible to ask his car orally. The machine, in turn, asks a series of questions, with the help of the answer to which the expert system substantiates the logical conclusion of the causes of the accident. Thus, a well-established expert system provides the necessary expertise on a certain range of issues.

Currently, expert systems are widely used in various fields: medicine, pedagogy, science, engineering design, etc. They have gained recognition in commercial practice.

Expert systems market in 1984-1985 grew very quickly: in the USA in 1984 they were sold for 100 million dollars, according to the forecasts of American experts, by 1993 this figure could increase to 2.5 billion dollars.

Interest in expert systems is explained by the fact that they can significantly improve the quality and reduce the cost of many types of work. Tasks that previously required the participation of highly qualified experts can now be performed by ordinary employees armed with "artificial intelligence" systems. The use of new systems is of particular importance in situations where it is necessary to make a decision based on information coming from a large number of sources, but which obviously incompletely describes the situation. An example of this is emergency management. Expert systems allow under these conditions to make decisions not only using the experience and intuition of the person making the decision, but also taking into account the experience of the most qualified experts in this field.

Thus, "artificial intelligence" systems and, above all, expert systems represent the highest level of modern programming.

In capitalist economic practice, they appeared much later than in the military business, where they were used to create “smart” weapons, control military operations, etc. The gradual introduction of “artificial intelligence” systems into business is considered by many in the United States as an undesirable leak of information. In order to maintain advanced levels of military programming development, in 1984 the Pentagon embarked on a large-scale program to create the basis for a new leap in the development of weapons systems. It was called the "Strategic Computing Initiative" (SCI).

Within the framework of this large-scale nationwide program, it is supposed to unite the efforts of the government, business and academic circles to solve a strategically important task - the creation of a new generation of computer technology with elements of "artificial intelligence" built into it. It is assumed for the five years 1984-1989. to spend 600 million dollars for these purposes. In a special report on SCI, the US Department of Defense experts argue that weapons systems and command and control systems equipped with "artificial intelligence" will significantly increase the effectiveness of the fight against an enemy superior in numbers and conventional weapons, due to the ability to better predict the direction of events in rapidly changing environment. The development of information technology in the West leads to the emergence of a new dangerous sphere of military rivalry - intellectualized weapon systems. The use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons systems greatly increases its potential danger. Capitalist firms are strenuously classifying their developments. "Our knowledge is our strategic funds, and we do not want it to become the property of all." Therefore, in the modern technical literature of developed capitalist countries, one can find a lot of discussion about the usefulness of creating "artificial intelligence" systems and the methodology for their development. But very rarely there are descriptions of the rules laid down in the systems, which represent "expert knowledge".

The computer itself, as well as all the technical innovations associated with it, thus played the role not so much of a catalyst for social change as a conservative of existing relations. The widespread use of new information technology gave society many opportunities, but under capitalism, the process of computerization is aimed solely at strengthening existing social structures.

Mass computerization, which began in connection with the advent of microprocessor technology, led to the fact that the process got out of control of the power of capital. Its influence on many phenomena of modern life began to be felt more and more clearly. It was at this stage that the ideologists of capitalism needed the concept of the "information society", in which the society of the future is presented as a transformed version of the modern bourgeois one.

Earlier, in the 1970s, when this concept was first put forward, it remained only one of the speculative constructions of bourgeois science. Today, the ruling circles of the capitalist countries feel the need to prove that the future "information society" will be capitalist. But this task is impossible even for such specialists as D. Bell, A. Toffler and others.

Forty-five years ago, futurologists predicted that by the year 2000 humanity would experience a stagnation in scientific development, which would lead to the collapse of civilization. The reason for such a gloomy forecast was the brewing "information explosion".

Ants that daily swallow an elephant

For the first time, scientists started talking about the threat of an “information explosion” in the 60s of the XX century. soon we will simply drown, unable to master the flow of new information, and this will inevitably lead to stagnation in scientific development and, as a result, to the collapse of civilization.

There has long been a joke in the scientific community that "man is a creature whose most delicious food is information." From these positions, our contemporary can be compared with an ant that has to swallow an elephant every day. But the year 2000 is long gone, and, according to research, the "critical information mass" capable of blowing up the world by the time we read this material has already quadrupled. Where are the nightmarish consequences of the "information explosion" in the epicenter of which we continue to live? Were the predictions wrong?

Let's not rush to conclusions. Indeed, among scientists today there is no common opinion on this matter. Some argue that the problems have only moved away for a while, while others argue that the disaster is happening right now, we just cannot yet fully appreciate its sad consequences. Who is right?

Waste factor

Our psyche, with all its unique capabilities, has limitations. It has been experimentally proven that the brain of an ordinary person is able to perceive and accurately process information at a speed of no more than 25 bits per second (one word of average length contains just 25 bits). With such a rate of absorption of information, a person can read no more than three thousand books in a lifetime. And then on condition that he will master 50 pages daily.

The most stubborn such speed once allowed to master the basic knowledge accumulated by mankind approximately by the middle of life. Today, unfortunately, this is no longer possible. A few decades ago, a new discovery or literary work immediately attracted the attention of the public. Now, in the scientific field alone, several million books appear every year. And even if you study exclusively fresh literature, then for every page you read there will be 10 thousand others, which are unrealistic to master. Experts even introduced the definition of "waste factor" - for literature that is in zero demand (we are talking not only about works of art). German researchers conducted a study of the demand for 45,000 scientific and technical publications in one of the Berlin libraries. And it turned out that the "junk factor" worked for 90 percent of these books! This means that millions of pages containing the latest technical knowledge have never been read by anyone.

In a word, we have time to study only a small fraction of the constantly accumulating information - and this is not so bad. The problem is that the information we receive tends to quickly become obsolete and needs to be replaced.

Half-life of topical knowledge

It is this playful, but quite scientific term that denotes the period of time during which half of the information we have learned loses its value. And it's getting shorter. Today, in the field of higher education, this period is approximately seven to ten years, and in some areas (for example, in computer technology) it has been reduced to a year. This means that if you study computer courses for 12 months, then by the end of them, half of the information you receive will be useless: it will become outdated. All this is reminiscent of a situation when a person is climbing up a descending escalator: only a few, and even at the cost of incredible stress, manage to maintain the necessary "level", but it is worth slowing down a little - and ...

Today, in the avalanche of information falling upon us, only an "encyclopedically semi-educated person" who knows about everything, but not too deeply, can navigate - and there are very few of them. Basically, wanting not to be "on the bottom step of the escalator", people seek salvation in the "narrow specialization" - the "narrower", the easier it is to maintain the level. As a result, an increasing number of people live with less and less knowledge about the world...

There is so much nonsense in the world that it does not fit in my head

If the brain is overstressed, it discards what is not urgently needed. Who can boast that he remembers logarithms, Faraday's laws, the chemical formula of cellulose, or the exact date of the reign of Vladimir II Monomakh? We all learned this in school! They taught, but forgot - that is, again we do not know. The situation is aggravated by the emergence of technology designed "for fools." Devices operating on the principle of "press the button - you get the result" create the illusion of meeting the requirements of the time. We easily use technical innovations, but the subconscious unwillingness to accept new information manifests itself in a kind of psychological incident: choosing the most "fancy" unit, rarely does anyone try to explore all its capabilities. As a result, the novelty is operated halfway at best ...

I don't know if you have noticed that the psychology of teaching has begun to change in leading schools and institutes? Previously, pupils and students were forced to memorize everything. Today, this is no longer pressed so zealously - it's great if a person remembers the formula or date, but if he easily operates with the material in which it can be found, this is also very good. This approach seems to be a kind of solution to the problem of the "information explosion" (not to mention saving the health of our overloaded children): it is not necessary to remember everything, it is enough to learn the logic of thinking in different fields of knowledge and the ability to quickly find what you need when you need it.

Scientists offer solutions to information problems, one more fantastic than the other. For example, to implant computer microchips in the brain that could store enormous amounts of information. However, is it such a fantasy? With the help of implanted microchips, doctors have already managed to restore mobility to several paralyzed patients. So, it is possible that microchips with additional memory are a matter of the not too distant future. But no matter what scientists come up with, the reserves of our brain are still not unlimited.
It is possible that rampant alcoholism is one of the consequences of the information stress that humanity is experiencing today. This is evidenced by the results of studies conducted at the Research Institute of the Brain of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the threat of alcoholism lies in wait primarily for those whose brain is subjected to information overload.

Experiments conducted on rats showed that animals that had to look for food in a particularly complex maze ended up preferring alcohol to water ... This is worth thinking about.

Selection is natural and... unnatural

In order to create an encyclopedia that is able to cover all the knowledge of mankind at any given time, it "will need to be republished at least annually, each time doubling the amount of material. And even if the "whole world" solve this problem, then who will be able to read everything that written in this book?
Experts see a way out in the strict selection and screening of information - and this is already happening in all areas of knowledge. Indeed, for the time being, such a process mitigates the consequences of the "information explosion" to a certain extent. But who can calculate how many invaluable facts have already been forgotten and discarded just because they seemed superfluous to someone? And most importantly, who is "in charge of the truth"? It should not be forgotten that ordinary people act as judges in this case - moderately developed, moderately limited, with their own personal and departmental interests ...

Simultaneously with such artificial selection of information, the process of "natural selection" takes place. Culture is being replaced by pop culture. Comic Bibles and abridged versions of classics are thrown onto the market. An unspoken ban appears on television - not to say anything smart, beyond the knowledge of the "average" viewer. Subtle humor is replaced by "jokes", the poetry of romances - by cheap "jagi-jagi", refined speech - by slang. And radio and TV presenters very naturally maintain a general low level, confusing cases and losing the thread of the conversation ...

Perhaps all this was called the end of our civilization by the futurologists of the 60s of the last century?

A. Maramon
"Interesting newspaper. Oracle" No. 10 2012

A constant increase in the speed and volume of publications (volume of information) on a global scale.

M.N. Epstein rightly asserts that “The information explosion is no less dangerous than the demographic explosion. According to Malthus, humanity as a producer lags behind itself as a consumer, that is, we are talking about the ratio of the total biological mass and the total economic product of mankind. But in a competition with itself, humanity still has much better chances than an individual in a competition with all of humanity. As it turns out by the beginning of the third millennium, the main resources of society are not industrial or agricultural, but informational. If the material production of mankind lags behind its own material needs, then the information consumption of an individual lags behind the information production of mankind even more. This is not a crisis of overpopulation, but of misunderstanding, a crisis of tribal identity. Mankind can feed itself, but can it understand itself, embrace with the mind of an individual what is created by the mind of the species? Will a biologically measured life span be enough for a person to become a person? (it’s like someone - Gastello, for example, twenty-odd years were enough for this).

Although this psychedelic and eschatological work is entirely built on false philosophical premises and on the psychology of spiritual “dismemberment”, one of its provisions has a specific meaning, of course, not in application to a person who is not involved in the manipulations of the information war, but applies specifically to the operator information weapon systems. It consists in the fact that if such an operator is calculated by the opposing side and becomes a virtual target of the enemy, then exceeding the rate of loading it with presumably significant but heterogeneous information at a rate above a certain level will inevitably lead to a disruption of his ability to control the combat information machine.

The revolution in modern information technologies has three main features, mainly related to temporal (temporal) factors.

First, regardless of the spatial factor, information transfer is faster (ij< 1 мс), чем осознание оператором самого факта её получения (у военного лётчика-испытателя т 2 >200 ms), especially the awareness of the significance of its content.

Secondly, an additional factor in the time lag in understanding the significance of the information received is the assessment of its congruence (replenishment of knowledge) or incongruence (new knowledge) to the reference system of archival data, as well as checking its relevance to the tasks assigned to a particular operator. This factor is of vital importance in the processing of foreign policy and military-political information. This primarily refers to the Internet as a network information resource, where objective and / or meaningful information is generously diluted with frank disinformation, provocative and subversive (especially in the field of culture and social processes) information messages, such as, for example, referenced postmodernist culturetrager article.

And, finally, thirdly, the extensive factor is of great importance, when the cross section of the flow of relevant information received per unit time (the rest can be screened out by technical means) exceeds the operator's visibility. In this case, it becomes necessary to introduce into the information processing technology a slow process of ranking the incoming information according to its significance in order to narrow the field of view according to the semantic and semantic criteria put into the computer.

In principle, the technical capabilities of modern computing technology (for example, the European super-MUK - with a speed of 4.9-10 15 bit-s "1, the placement of which required the construction of a special building) make it possible to cope with all the noted types of temporal However, in the foreseeable future, it is difficult to hope to obtain the necessary and sufficient software to solve the full range of I problems arising from these factors, s; and if we cannot fully trust the operator , then we definitely cannot afford to trust the artificial intelligence of a self-learning computer.Although in the understanding of cybernetics, the human operator is an informal factor, which reduces the reliability of the information and computing structure and increases the risk of system failure, the participation of the operator is at the present stage development of computer systems is the only guarantee of ensuring their performance in the event of an information attack or the influence of another non-formalizable factor provoked from the outside, that is, a factor in reducing the vulnerability of an information system element in the conditions of an information war.

It is absolutely clear that at present, in the conditions of the temporal information revolution, it is not the speed of information transfer in the global information field that comes to the fore, since it is already orders of magnitude ahead of the speed of awareness of its receipt, but the speed of its processing and provision to decision makers, in a credible, reliable and easy-to-understand manner.

A palliative solution to emerging problems technologically and logistically can be achieved by performing a number of activities, primarily the following of them:

• the transition from relay-race to fan transmission of strategic information, while the strategic nature is determined according to specified criteria (information source, key semantic patterns, and others) by special program blocks;
• creation of a system of independent on-line and registered (for subsequent analysis of the nature and causes of the error) control of the non-formalizable factor (operator);
• development of a system for instant (parallel) access to relevant archival data;
• creation on the basis of a modern self-learning supercomputer, preferably of national production (the importance of this factor will be assessed in subsequent sections of the work), a situational center for evaluating and distributing relevant information among the hierarchical structures of public administration.

The choice of these measures, of course, is neither the only one nor the best - it is currently optimal in terms of the availability and operational feasibility of adaptive measures.

T.D. Tuleshov, V.N. SPECTOR

An information explosion is a process in which there is a constant increase in the speed and volume of information on a global scale.

It is also worth talking about information barriers. This concept was developed by Academician V. M. Glushkov. It represents the discrepancy between the information needs of society and the technical capabilities of their implementation. According to Glushkov, there are three information barriers:

1) Associated with the discovery of writing, which makes it possible to preserve and transfer knowledge. Up to this point, the human brain was the only place where information was stored. This barrier was overcome around the 5th millennium BC. e.

2) Associated with the advent of printing, this event dramatically increased the number of information media. This barrier was overcome around the 15th century. Later, new methods of dissemination and storage of information arose, such as: telegraph, telephone, photography, television, cinema, magnetic recordings. But the person still passed the information through his brain, the human brain processed this information.

3) Associated with the emergence of Electronic Computers (ECMs), which made it possible to increase the speed of information processing by an order of magnitude. This barrier was passed in the middle of the 20th century, along with the advent of the first computer. At that moment, the volumes of information turned out to be so large that the human brain and its abilities for this processing were simply not enough.

And accordingly, it is clear that the growth of information has become especially significant after the scientific and technological revolution. If we now analyze the growth of information, we can see a simple exponential dependence of the growth in the amount of information over time, which is shown in the figure below.

Mikhail Naumovich Epshtein in his book "Information Explosion and Postmodern Trauma" writes that: "Two centuries ago, in 1798, Thomas R. Malthus published his famous "Experience on the law of population and its impact on the future improvement of society"", where he defined the law of disproportion between the growth of the population and the amount of natural resources needed for the life of mankind. It turns out that humanity is increasing exponentially, and natural resources are renewed at a rate described by an arithmetic progression. And Malthus predicted that with such a growth rate of people, there would simply be no resources left on Earth to feed humanity and famine would come. But by the end of the 20th century, this problem was partly avoided due to the development of technology, and due to "... the success of education, which sharply reduced the birth rate in civilized countries."

And two hundred years after Malthus, a new problem appears, but this time it is not demographic, but informational.

Information explosion manifests itself in the following:

• The appearance of contradictions between the limited abilities of a person to process information and the existing powerful flows and sizes of stored information.
• The existence of a huge amount of unnecessary (redundant) information, which makes it difficult for the consumer to perceive information that is useful to the consumer.
• The emergence of all kinds of economic, political and other social barriers that impede the dissemination of information. For example, secret information needed for a particular production.

The consequences of the information explosion are many, I would like to talk about the problem of human intelligence after the information explosion.

§2. Human intellect after the information explosion.

What is intelligence? The Great Soviet Encyclopedia says that "intellect (from Latin intellectus - knowledge, understanding, reason), the ability to think, rational knowledge, in contrast to such, for example, mental abilities as feeling, will, intuition, imagination, etc. ."

In order for a person to feel normal, it is necessary that he collapse in himself 3 components: physical, spiritual and intellectual. If you take away at least one of the components, then a person will not be able to exist.

To train the intellect, it is necessary for the brain to work, i.e. read, think, etc., but do it gradually and completely, and not in leaps and everywhere a little bit.

That's the problem with the information explosion. Man is lagging behind mankind. There is a growing imbalance between "the development of human individuality, limited by biological age, and the socio-technological development of mankind, for which there is no visible limit in time." With each new generation, an increasingly heavy burden of knowledge and impressions accumulated in previous centuries and with which a person is not able to assimilate is imposed on a person's personality.

All this amount of knowledge and that vast amount of information accumulating in the interval, say, 16-17 centuries, is now delivered to our head within one week, that is, the speed of creating information increases thousands of times, despite the fact that the information accumulated by all previous at times, also continuously summarized and updated as part of new information resources.

It turns out that a person of the modern turn (20-21) centuries must understand a colossal number of times more information in his life than his compatriot who lived somewhere 300-400 years ago.

We can cite some statistics related to the information explosion, the main victims of which are the last two or three generations of the 20th century.

The world's best libraries double their number of books and treasures every 14 years. At the beginning of the 13th century, the Sorbonne library in Paris was considered the largest in Europe: it contained 1338 books.

The daily issue of The New York Times has more information than the average 17th century Englishman learned in his lifetime.

More new information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous five thousand years.

Consequently, a person may feel restrained in development, a cripple, unable to fully compare with the information environment surrounding him.

Voltaire said: "The multiplicity of facts and writings is growing so rapidly that in the near future it will be necessary to reduce everything to extracts and dictionaries"

This is confirmed in the 21st century, fewer and fewer people read the classic novels of the 17th-19th centuries, and some even know about their existence only from encyclopedias, and brief retellings, movies, articles in magazines and the Internet. This is quite expected, because. a large amount of information has appeared that cannot be studied by a person in his life. and Epstein M.N. in his book he says that if the average life expectancy of a person were increased to a thousand years, then culture would return to its normal course, and a person would have enough time and energy to read all the great works of the classics without haste, and the study of various aspects would be given more time than in ordinary human life.

If earlier it was necessary to travel around the world to get a certain book, now you can even almost not go to the library, because. all books fit in computer memory. For example, according to research conducted by Carnegie Mellon University, over the lifetime of printing, people have created more than 100 million books. Nearly 28 million of them can be found in the Library of Congress.
Usually, a book in DOC format weighs up to a megabyte on average. Consequently, the volume of all books in electronic form in the Library of Congress is close to 28 terabytes.

It is also estimated that the growth of information available on the Internet by small estimates is 20 terabytes of data per month.

Impressive numbers, aren't they?

And what will happen if so much information is pushed into the human brain in such a short time, and you still need to check it for truth, because if you read various messages on the Internet about one problem, then almost every author talks about this problem in different ways, or sometimes even contradicts itself. So what will happen to the brain in such a situation, it seems to me that it will “explode”, or a person will simply “go crazy” from all this rapidly developing information.

(Ursul A.D.). Stanisław Lem described this problem and the inflation of culture it caused in Summa Technologiae (1964), repeating it many times later (for example, satirically in "Pericalipsis" from the collection "Absolute Void", 1971).

Civilizational trends in the development of the information society are characterized by the fact that in the city of mankind 18∙10 18 bytes of information (18 Exabytes) were produced. Over the past five years, more information has been produced by mankind than in all previous history. The volume of information in the world is increasing annually by 30%. On average, 2.5∙10 8 bytes are produced per person per year in the world.

According to statistics, the volume of digital information doubles every eighteen months. For the most part (up to 95%), this stream consists of unstructured data (only 5% are various databases - structured information in one way or another).

Question research

Developing: methodology and statistics of measurements in the society of information and information loads, regulation of the safe content of information by federal legislation.

An information explosion is no less dangerous than a demographic one. According to Malthus, humanity as a producer lags behind itself as a consumer, that is, we are talking about the ratio of the total biological mass and the total economic product of mankind. But humanity still has much better chances in a competition with itself than an individual has in a competition with all of humanity. As it turns out by the beginning of the third millennium, the main resources of society are not industrial or agricultural, but informational. If the material production of mankind lags behind its own material needs, then the information consumption of an individual lags behind the information production of mankind even more. This is not a crisis of overpopulation, but of misunderstandings, a crisis of tribal identity. Mankind can feed itself - but can it understand itself, embrace with the mind of an individual what is created by the mind of the species? Will a biologically measured life span be enough for a person to become a person?

- M. N. Epshtein, "Information Explosion and Postmodern Trauma"

see also

• Information Overload/Information Noise

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Notes

An excerpt characterizing the Information explosion

She now first saw him and now experienced everything that she felt then. She remembered the long, sad, stern look he gave at these words, and she understood the meaning of the reproach and despair of that long look.
“I agreed,” Natasha said to herself now, “that it would be terrible if he remained always suffering. I said it then only because it would be terrible for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it would be terrible for me. He then still wanted to live - he was afraid of death. And I told him so rudely, stupidly. I didn't think this. I thought something completely different. If I said what I thought, I would say: let him die, die all the time before my eyes, I would be happy in comparison with what I am now. Now... Nothing, no one. Did he know it? No. Didn't know and never will know. And now you can never, never fix it.” And again he spoke the same words to her, but now in her imagination Natasha answered him differently. She stopped him and said: “Terrible for you, but not for me. You know that without you there is nothing in my life, and suffering with you is the best happiness for me. And he took her hand and shook it the way he had squeezed it that terrible evening, four days before his death. And in her imagination she spoke to him still other tender, loving speeches, which she could have said then, which she spoke now. “I love you… you… love, love…” she said, clutching her hands convulsively, clenching her teeth with a fierce effort.
And sweet sorrow seized her, and tears were already coming into her eyes, but suddenly she asked herself: to whom is she saying this? Where is he and who is he now? And again everything was shrouded in dry, hard bewilderment, and again, tightly knitting her eyebrows, she peered at where he was. And now, now, it seemed to her, she was penetrating the secret ... But at that moment, when the incomprehensible, it seemed, was revealed to her, the loud knock of the handle of the door lock painfully struck her hearing. Quickly and carelessly, with a frightened, unoccupied expression on her face, the maid Dunyasha entered the room.
“Come to your father, quickly,” said Dunyasha with a special and lively expression. “A misfortune, about Pyotr Ilyich ... a letter,” she said with a sob.

In addition to the general feeling of alienation from all people, Natasha at that time experienced a special feeling of alienation from the faces of her family. All her own: father, mother, Sonya, were so close to her, familiar, so everyday that all their words, feelings seemed to her an insult to the world in which she had lived lately, and she was not only indifferent, but looked at them with hostility. . She heard Dunyasha's words about Pyotr Ilyich, about the misfortune, but did not understand them.
“What is their misfortune, what misfortune can there be? They have everything of their own, old, familiar and calm, ”Natasha mentally told herself.
When she entered the hall, her father quickly left the countess's room. His face was wrinkled and wet with tears. He must have run out of that room to let loose the sobs that were choking him. Seeing Natasha, he frantically waved his hands and burst into painfully convulsive sobs that distorted his round, soft face.
“Don’t… Petya… Go, go, she… she… is calling…” And he, sobbing like a child, quickly shuffling with his weakened legs, went up to a chair and almost fell on it, covering his face with his hands.
Suddenly, like an electric current, ran through Natasha's entire being. Something terribly hurt her in the heart. She felt a terrible pain; it seemed to her that something was coming off in her and that she was dying. But following the pain, she felt an instant release from the prohibition of life that lay on her. Seeing her father and hearing her mother's terrible, rude cry from behind the door, she instantly forgot herself and her grief. She ran up to her father, but he, waving his hand helplessly, pointed to her mother's door. Princess Mary, pale, with a trembling lower jaw, came out of the door and took Natasha by the hand, saying something to her. Natasha did not see or hear her. She went through the door with quick steps, stopped for a moment, as if in a struggle with herself, and ran up to her mother.
The countess was lying on an armchair, strangely awkwardly stretching herself, and banging her head against the wall. Sonya and the girls held her hands.
“Natasha, Natasha!” shouted the countess. - Not true, not true ... He is lying ... Natasha! she screamed, pushing away those around her. - Go away, everyone, it's not true! Killed! .. ha ha ha ha! .. not true!
Natasha knelt on an armchair, bent over her mother, embraced her, lifted her up with unexpected force, turned her face towards her, and clung to her.
- Mommy! .. my dear! .. I'm here, my friend. Mom, she whispered to her, not stopping for a second.
She did not let her mother out, tenderly wrestled with her, demanded a pillow, water, unbuttoned and tore her mother's dress.
“My friend, my dear ... mother, darling,” she whispered incessantly, kissing her head, hands, face and feeling how uncontrollably, in streams, tickling her nose and cheeks, her tears flowed.
The Countess squeezed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and fell silent for a moment. Suddenly she got up with unusual rapidity, looked around senselessly, and, seeing Natasha, began to squeeze her head with all her might. Then she turned her face, wrinkled with pain, to look at him for a long time.
“Natasha, you love me,” she said in a low, trusting whisper. - Natasha, you will not deceive me? Will you tell me the whole truth?