The end of knowing

The world changed dramatically after the turn of the millennium. Smartphones, digital payments and streaming movies took over from the age of TV, telephones, wallets and theatres, just for example. A list of all changes would be large and confusing. Why are all these changes happening now and why so quickly? Instead of looking at a “Gee Whiz” list of things that have changed, it is easier to understand what is happening by looking at the underlying causes driving these changes. Surprisingly, there is only one root cause — just one tipping point — The Internet.

Does the Internet exist? Of course, it does, what a silly question! Well then, where is it? Suddenly, the question doesn’t seem so silly. People think of the internet as computers and routers and servers, which is a bit like thinking about the mind as neurons and synapses and acetylcholine jumping between them.

The Internet is a network and it does not have a physical reality, it exists somewhere else. That may sound scary but is no scarier than the mind, or feelings — things that are not physical but do exist, caused by the network we call the brain. Scientists have a name for things like these — they are called Emergent Phenomena or Spontaneous Order. Around 2000, the Internet began to exhibit signs of emergent behaviour. We called it The Cloud. But what caused this to happen?

There were two increases around 2000 — in storage densities and processor speeds. It became possible to store trillions of bits of information in tiny packages. All the books ever written, all the films made, all the music created, all in an inexpensive plastic square a quarter of the size of a human fingernail. Memory density had crossed the threshold to where storage was enough for anything, no matter how much data is needed. Banks, theatres, libraries, books, newspapers, and an endless series of institutions from the past began to disappear into The Cloud.

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Large amounts of information need large amounts of processing power, just as large paper filing systems need large numbers of clerks to maintain them. Within 50 years, since the 1950s, computers became smaller, cheaper and faster — processors the size of a fingernail could manipulate trillions of bits of information in less than a second. Not only could we store everything, but we could also do just about anything we wanted with it. Young Indians, all over the world, created the algorithms that made any processing possible. Processors began to connect to each other, just as biological cells had evolved into neurons and formed brains, a billion years ago.

People connected with each other over trillions of connections on The Cloud.

Relationships, values, opinions, science and engineering began to change at speeds never seen before. When a virus attacked humanity, we countered nature’s malicious genetic code with our creation — mRNA, created in a matter of weeks with shared information of millions of scientists and peer-reviewers interacting over The Cloud. We won.

Every processor needs a tiny amount of electricity to function, just as every neuron does. In biological systems, this energy comes from the flipping of two molecules ADP and ATP, one into the other. We had created artificial electrochemical energy storage systems, and batteries, centuries ago, but they were too bulky to power tiny processors. Around 2000, energy density, how much energy we can store in small spaces, began to enable a tipping point on the Internet. The elements Lithium and Fluorine could give us batteries that were tiny. We haven’t got there yet but Lithium-Ion batteries became small enough and light enough to power processors, move cars and fly drones.

Using these, we packaged supercomputers with near-endless memory into smartphones. One in every two people on the planet has them. They are the neurons and sense organs of The Cloud and they have a chilling and enthralling instruction on their screens, “Ask anything”.

Anybody can know anything, at any time, anywhere. This is the real change in our world today. When the pandemic of 2019 stopped the world in its tracks, the Internet stood between us and the virus. We learned more than we had ever learned before, by ourselves.

The Cloud will change who we are and how we think. India, with her billions and her freedom, will be where the greatest change will happen. The millennia-old institutions of education will fade into a new emergent order. I call it, “The End of Knowing”.

(The author is a renowned academician and has been honoured with several international awards and accolades)