Just as we draw the life-cycle of technologies as a logistic function or S-curve, presumably there is an S-curve for the accumulation of knowledge.

In principle, if the universe were finite, there would be a sum total of all possible knowledge. If there were a fundamental particle, this would be something like the position, velocity, acceleration (in all dimensions, with all possible moments, in a physics well-beyond Newton’s) of each particle now, and its entire history – since while the future may be determine from the present, there may be multiple pasts which could generate this present.

It is possible this could be reduced with some intelligent compression algorithm, for instance knowing the fundamental equations, the appropriate coefficients, and the initial state of the universe.  I am nevertheless doubtful that with a complete description of the initial state of the universe we could actually explain and reproduce the production of this blog post.

Suffice it to say this information would require something more than universe size to store it, since the universe stores its present state, but perhaps not it’s past states (i.e. it is Markovian).

The knowledge we actually have is a very, very, small subset of this, perhaps only 1 googolplexth of all knowledge (if that much). (If a hundredth is 1 / 100, a googolplexth is 1 / a googolplex).

We are in no danger of discovering all that needs to be discovered. We are still in the early, “birthing” stages of knowledge acquisition.

Get back to the knowledge-mines ye academics, there is much to do.