The History Files #44: Information Explosion

This week, we take at the Law of Accelerating Returns, or the exponential explosion of information over the centuries. It’s a big topic and we just skim the surface of a fascinating area of study, beginning with the development of language, to the invention of the printing press, to today’s portable microcomputers. Things are a bit topsy-turvy this week, so apologies for the abbreviated length of this episode (kind of ironic considering the subject matter). Not only is it about half our usual run time, but most of the “media” references showed up at the end as we thought of more and more things to add.

Show notes and links:

* Postal Service Act

* Battle of Olustee  (1864)

* Panama–Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco (1915)

* Habibullah Khan

* Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing, Neal Stephenson

* The Law of Accelerating Returns  by Ray Kurzweil

* To the Dustbin of History , Gary North (lewrockwell.com)

* Moore’s law

* The History of Paper (silk-road.com)

* Printing press

* The Space Show (podcast) Tue, 02/16/2016 | Dr. John Brandenburg (thespaceshow.com)

* Hand Weapons of World War One: Knife, Club, & Spade (youtube.com)

* Rough Riders (TV Movie 1997) (imdb.com)

* Rough Riders (1997)  (youtube.com) With Spanish subtitles. It’s the only streaming version I could find.