In an effort to bring order to the chaotic world of technology several laws have been created. Moore’s Law, the oldest and most famous, predicts that processing power will double every 18 months with little or no increase in cost. Although this anticipated pace has been modified downward recently, the direction of this prediction has proven remarkably accurate, and these rapid technological advances have created massive changes in other areas.
The network corollary to the growth in processing power is Gilder’s Law. George Gilder postulates that the bandwidth of communication systems triples every twelve months. This increase in both processing power and network consumption is either the result of, or a key contributor to, the massive and seemingly endless growth of content.
It is well understood that the effective manipulation of data yields information. Solid information begets intelligence. Intelligence leads to wisdom. But what if the growth of information, in this parlance content, outpaces our ability to manage it? Will we then ever attain wisdom?
Most organizations are expert in the creation of content. Precious few manage the content well. Individually we drown in content. In the corporate environment our email is littered with topics ranging from the closing of a two million deal, to the statement that someone’s lights were left on in the parking garage. Do we spend the appropriate time on the former? The answer is no if we even see the latter.
Next up, my law predicting the rate of content proliferation as a result of new and disruptive technologies.
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