Jevon’s Paradox and a world of spiraling complexity

To appreciate one of the consequences of technological advancement, Jevon’s Paradox is important to understand. In brief: William Stanley Jevons, a 19th-century economist, theorized that as technological innovations lead to more efficient use of resources, paradoxically, the overall consumption of those resources increases. A simple comic I found on the site ‘Sketchplanations’ illustrates: Jevon’s Paradox posits that as we make progress, the world can become more intricate. In the case of information systems we create to navigate the world, this paradox becomes even more apparent. Twitter user atroyn asks an important question, of what happens when the ever-expanding universe of knowledge leads to greater complexity? The fractal nature of intelligence As we focus our growing computational capabilities to unravel the complexities of the world, we often discover that the more we know, the more there is to know. This phenomenon resembles a fractal, where intricate patterns repeat at diffe

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• Cécile Tang