The Kardashev Scale is one of the most popularized way to determine a civilization’s ranking
and advancements in whatever universe they reside.
Nikolai Kardashev introduced his scale first in 1964,
however, this scale has been modified and tweaked by many different cosmologists, astrophysicists,
and even science fiction authors over many years.
Some of the more popular alternative approaches to the Kardashev Scale include Microdimensional
Mastery by John Barrow,
Planetary Mastery by Robert Zubrin, and Information Mastery by Carl Sagan.
Today, our focus will be on the Information Mastery version of the Kardashev scale.
But as always, be sure to subscribe to our channel for more content ahead.
In his book, The Cosmic Connection, Carl Segan proposed an alternative approach to the Kardashev
Scale.
He added another dimension to the original scale in addition to the pure energy usage
that was first used to characterize different civilizations.
Sagan believed that the amount of information available to a civilization should be an important
criterion when trying to come up with a useful metric to measure different types of civilizations.
So he assigned a lettered scale from A-Z where each letter meant an order of magnitude increase
in the volume of information a civilization can hold.
This information, he proposed, could be described in terms of bits, the number of yes or no
statements concerning different civilizations, and the universe that such civilizations occupy.
He started with a Type A civilization that he believed would have access to about 10^6
bits of unique information available to it.
According to Carl Sagan, this civilization type would be extremely primitive and less
than any recorded civilization in human history.
On the other end of the scale though, a Type Z civilization, he argued, would have about
10^31 unique bits of information available to it, making it the most highly advanced
civilization in its universe.
One thing to be aware of here is that for a civilization to advance to higher stages
on this scale, it must add unique bits of information on to its preexisting knowledge.
For example, information is counted if a brand new technology
is invented or an already existing technology is innovated.
Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that the information and energy axes are not
strictly interdependent here as well.
This means that even a Type Z civilization would not need to be a Type 3 civilization
on the original Kardashev Scale.
It could be more or less advanced than a type 3 because the focus of the Information Mastery
Scale is on the amount of unique information a civilization possesses.
So, In general, Carl Sagan believed that a civilization that is high on the energy scale
could also be high on the information scale.
But this does not necessarily have to be true.
The reason for this is because Sagan argued that “[we] certainly can imagine societies
that are very complex and require many more bits to characterize them than our society
requires – but that are not interested in interstellar communication”.
This means a highly advanced civilization with numerous bits of information wouldn’t
necessarily want to expand outwards in its universe classifying it lower in terms of
the original energy usage criterion of the Kardashev Scale.
An example of this might be a highly developed civilization like the Autobots and Decepticons
from Transformers who reside on Cybertron, a highly advanced planet, but do not venture
out into space to colonize any other planets or star systems.
This is the key difference between Nikolai Kardashev’s original idea and Carl Sagan’s
interpretation of it.
Now, this is a game-changer since it takes the scale in its own unique direction with
its own unique categorization for different types of civilizations.
In other words, Sagan tries to provide a more detailed breakdown of the original idea using
his own interpretation of what should be required to measure and rank different civilizations
within their universes.
So let’s take a brief look into what Carl Sagan proposes in terms of his Information
Mastery version of the Kardashev Scale.
To understand the different civilization types on the Information Mastery Scale in terms
of their available information content, we must first analyze the concept of a popular
game called “Twenty Questions”.
In this game, one player imagines an object or a concept and makes an initial classification
of it in their mind without revealing this information to the others.
Now, to identify the correct object or concept, the other players must ask a total of 20 questions,
which can be answered only with “Yes” or “No” statements.
So, naturally then, we must consider how much information a civilization would need to solve
such a puzzle?
Starting with the very first question of whether we are dealing with an object or a concept
already divides the universe into 2 perhaps unequal pieces.
The second question further divides it into 4 pieces.
And by the same logic, the third question divides it into 8 pieces and so on.
Now proceeding in this manner with all of the 20 questions would then divide the universe
into 2^20 such unequal pieces.
Now let’s simplify things here as Carl Sagan originally did in his book, The Cosmic Connection.
We know that 2^20 = (2^10)^2. But 2^10 = 1024.
So to make calculations much faster, we can approximate 2^10 = 1024 by 1000 which
is 10^3.
Now If we go back to our initial game of “20 questions”, we have 2^20 = (2^10)^2 = (10^3)^2
= 10^6.
This tells us that to be able to play a game of 20 questions, a civilization must have
at least 10^6 unique bits of information available to it.
So, according to Carl Sagan then, a civilization with 10^6 unique bits of information would
be classified as a Type A civilization.
This is where the Information Mastery Scale begins in terms of unique bits possessed by
different civilizations.
As mentioned before, a Type A civilization would be extremely primitive and limited in
their knowledge.
It would be more primitive than any human society, we have on record and a good starting
point for the Information Mastery Scale.
This type of civilization would only have about 10^6 unique bits of information available
to them.
Perhaps It would include early Hominin and Hominid societies with very limited information
available to them.
Moving further along the Information Master Scale would require much of educated guesswork
since Carl Sagan himself only briefly talks about a few different levels and their
capabilities.
For example, Greek civilization would be characterized as a Type C civilization due to the information,
they acquired.
It is estimated that the earlier Greek civilization contributed about 10^8 unique bits of information.
But the total written contribution to our civilization up until 1970s from classical
Greek civilization is estimated by Philip Morrison to be about 10^9 unique bits of information.
This makes this, and other civilizations similar to this, a Type D civilization.
But perhaps the amount of information that Periclean Athens contributed would probably
make it a Type E civilization.
This would classify it as having around 10^10 unique bits of information since it added
a lot more literature, philosophy, drama, and arts compared to the previous era.
Now going by these standards, Sagan estimated about 10^14 unique bits of information for
our civilization of the 1970s.
So, in the 70s, we were classified as a Type H civilization on the Information Mastery
Scale.
Currently, it is estimated that we may be a Type R civilization on this scale possessing
a total of about 10^23 bits of information.
We seemed to have moved rapidly down the scale from the 70s due to the exponential increase
in our computer technologies and computing power.
However, some disagree.
For example, the fact that it is difficult to determine how much of the available data
is unique in our civilization today sparks much of the debate.
People do not agree on what should and shouldn’t count as data.
For instance, if a picture is shared a million times on the internet, does each share count
as unique data, or only the original copy counts?
The same could apply to written materials and videos being duplicated and distributed.
Either way, the word ‘unique’ used by Carl Sagan could possibly imply that perhaps
only the original work should count.
This would put us a lot lower on the Information Mastery Scale than a Type R.
But again that remains an open question due to the ambiguity
of the initial classification of this scale by Carl Sagan.
But moving ahead, Sagan defined a few more levels ahead of the Type H civilization of
the 70s.
He believed that a civilization that has had its first contact with other alien civilizations
would probably be somewhere around a Type J or K.
This would put them at about 10^15 and 10^16 unique bits of information respectively.
Furthermore, a galactic civilization of a million worlds each with about 1000 times the information
content of the 1970's Earth, would be classified as a type Q civilization in Sagan's view.
This civilization would have around 10^22 unique bits of information available to it.
Now, if we expand this galactic civilization into billions of such galaxies, we would have
a Type Z civilization with the information content of about 10^31 unique bits of information.
But a Type Z civilization may not be possible according to Sagan, since there wouldn’t
be enough time in any universe for communication over such vast distances between the inhabitants
of this civilization.
But that assumption is based on our current, perhaps primitive, method of communication
by electromagnetic waves over vast distances.
For now, we can only speculate on that topic.
Now the civilization types that Carl Sagan did not initially define could be interpolated
and extrapolated using his original assumptions of the Information Mastery scale.
But that is a topic for another time!
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