Related papers: The Information Catastrophe
The information loss and remnant proposals for resolving the black hole information paradox are reconsidered. It is argued that in typical cases information loss implies energy loss, and thus can be thought of in terms of coupling to a…
Crossing multiple planetary boundaries places us in a zone of uncertainty that is characterized by considerable fluctuations in climatic events. The situation is exacerbated by the relentless use of resources and energy required to develop…
Is our world just information? We argue that our current notion of information has one serious shortcoming: It is quite literally meaningless. We suggest a meaningful extension of the notion of information that is dynamic, internal,…
While technology and trade have made modern food systems increasingly resilient to disruptions, it is unknown if human society could survive the most extreme threats to agriculture, such as from severe climate change or nuclear/biological…
Development of sustainable insurance for cyber risks, with associated benefits, inter alia requires reduction of ambiguity of the risk. Considering cyber risk, and data breaches in particular, as a man-made catastrophe clarifies the…
It is believed that a particle cannot carry more than one bit of information. It is pointed out that particle or single-particle quantum state can carry more than one bit of information. It implies that minimum energy cost of transmitting a…
The number of sensors deployed in the world is expected to explode in the near future. At this moment, nearly 30 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices are connected and this number is expected to double in the next four years. While not…
The demand for computing is continuing to grow exponentially. This growth will translate to exponential growth in computing's energy consumption unless improvements in its energy-efficiency can outpace increases in its demand. Yet, after…
Which are the factors underlying human information production on a global level? In order to gain an insight into this question we study a corpus of 252-633 Million publicly available data files on the Internet corresponding to an overall…
The Sun is expected to increase its radiant output by about 10% per billion years. The rate at which the radius of the Earth's orbit would need to increase in order to keep the present value of the Sun's radiant flux at the Earth constant…
During 2009 nuclear power plants, with a capacity of 370 GWe, will produce roughly 14% of the worldwide electric energy. About 65000 tons of natural uranium equivalent are required to operate these reactors. For 15 years on average only 2/3…
Humanity's path to avoiding extinction is a daunting and inevitable challenge which proves difficult to solve, partially due to the lack of data and evidence surrounding the concept. We aim to address this confusion by addressing the most…
Recent developments in hardware and information technology have enabled the emergence of billions of connected, intelligent devices around the world exchanging information with minimal human involvement. This paradigm, known as the Internet…
The carbon footprint of Bitcoin has drawn wide attention, but Bitcoin's long-term impact on the climate remains uncertain. Here we present a framework to overcome uncertainties in previous estimates and project Bitcoin's electricity…
I discuss fundamental limits placed on information and information processing by gravity. Such limits arise because both information and its processing require energy, while gravitational collapse (formation of a horizon or black hole)…
We are in the midst of a transformation of the digital news ecosystem. The expansion of online social networks, the influence of recommender systems, increased automation, and new generative artificial intelligence tools are rapidly…
The demand for electricity is expected to continue its historical growth trend far into the future and particularly over the 20-year projection period discussed in this report. To meet this growth with traditional approaches will require…
Given the urgency to reduce fossil fuel energy production to make climate tipping points less likely, we call for resource-aware knowledge gain in the research areas on Universe and Matter with emphasis on the digital transformation. A…
The physical limits to computation have been under active scrutiny over the past decade or two, as theoretical investigations of the possible impact of quantum mechanical processes on computing have begun to make contact with realizable…
Merely by existing, all physical systems contain information, and physical dynamics transforms and processes that information. This note investigates the information processing power of living systems. Living systems harvest free energy…