Step 1: Counting Abstract Objects

It wasn’t just crickets and then computers.  Civilization has been wrestling with data since the start.  Do a Google search and you’ll find that we’re still struggling to get a handle on what we know.  Perhaps it would help to consider our approach historically.  Wolfram|Alpha has prepared a special timeline of computable knowledge for just such an endeavor…

(click to explore the timeline)

[Advance of the Data Civilization: A Timeline via Stephen Wolfram|Blog]