Upgrading

EVENTUALLY THE INTERNET, in its current and traditional format, in which information is processed, transmitted, and stored digitally, using a nearly infinite variety of sequences of two digits, ones and zeroes, in unique patterns, will become obsolete. Micro chips, micro processors, our modern marvels of miniaturization, will have become lumbering, inneficient dinosaurs, inadequate to the task of preserving the sum total of ever burgeoning human knowledge, the accumulation of which will reach near infinity as it doubles with increasing frequency. Facts will be preserved on mere molecules, even atoms. But before it reaches that level of quantum extremity, DNA molecules, with their chains of protein molecules, will be the next stage of downsizing, like ever smaller bookshelves lining the walls up to the ceiling and stacks of libraries stuffed to the gills with romance novels alone. The Library of Congress, the world's most prodigious collection of print material, has already exceeded one hundred million volumes, and counting, with every item in stock fully reduced to digits and squiggles.In the United States alone, more than forty thousand new books are published every year, and all are considered candidates for inclusion in the nation's largest library. Thomas Jefferson would doubtless be amazed at how wondrously his original gift of about six thousand books has matesticized into gargantuan proportions. It would have taken him years to read everything in the modern building, a feat he would have undoubtedly attempted and completed. But the journey has only but begun. The amount of information which can be stored in the universe could potentially, eventually, exceed the number of sub atomic particles in the universe, a proposition which at present seems most unlikely, more unlikely than the prospect of storing information within DNA molecules or the cells and molecules of which they are comprised. One must factor in the potential for information storage by other intelligent species throughout the universe. Atom sharing, perhaps? Famed economist John Maynard Keynes, a capitalist with reservations, once asked, theoretically: "At what peoint does capitalism come to an end? When the living standard aspirations of every living creature on earth are satisfied?" When the population of planet Earth finally levels off, and maybe even begins to decrease a bit? Otherwise, with the projected exponential increase in the human power of material production and distribution, the universe, in theory, will become saturated with the material objects of humanity, a universe filled to the brim, full to overflowing with dish washers and cars, but nowhere left to drive. Perhaps we should reconsider the zealousness with which we seek new knowledge.