The exponential nature of information

You will probably read the title of this post and immediately assume that you will be reading another long theoretical rant about some inconsequential social theory that I thought up one night while laying awake in bed. You will have made an accurate assumption.
This most recent theory of mine was developed when I was stressing out over writing a paper. I began to think about how one could write a paper with the same exact source material as someone else and produce two entirely different outcomes. This led me to think further that this must occur several thousand times a year at colleges and universitites all over the world, and has been occuring since organized higher education has been in place. Think about the utter overload of information that our society is spewing out. Millions of college students write tens of millions of papers every year. Even if you factor out the papers that must have been written before typewriters were invented, that must mean that BILLIONS of papers have been written by college students alone in the last 100 years. This information is most likely sitting around somewhere in a desk or file cabinet, never again to see the light of day. I assume many professors simply throw out the papers they choose to keep. This led me to make a little theory on why students shouldn't have to write papers.

I will call this theory the Stagnation Theory. It simply suggests that the value of your written work can be directly related to the amount it is duplicated and circulated. College papers, for example, fall near the bottom of the scale of Stagnation Theory. You only make one copy of your paper, and it is never published and most of the time read only by yourself and your professor. Therefore, no matter how well written it may be, it has no value because the information contained within it is stagnant. Near the top of the ladder of ST is religious texts. The Bible and the Koran, for example, are read and circulated by millions of people. Not only that, but they are passed down to later generations to impart the information within to the next group. The most valuable pieces of written work are those that are most successful at transmitting information. That's why the internet and blogs are quickly overcoming printed news. The faster and easier it is to distribute information, the more successful it is. ST doesn't take into account truth or accuracy, because I am referring to all written pieces, from news reports to fiction novels. The most infections pieces of information that travel the quickest are more often than not absolute lies. Think about how quickly gossip spreads, or how a flase news story can get blown out of proportion. False stories are created because they are known to spread quickly. Stagnation Theory is all about how much a piece of writing is duplicated and circulated, and so its a more "valuable" piece if it reaches a broad audience in as short of amount of time as possible. One final factor in ST is staying power. Once again this puts relgious texts on top because they have been around so long. News reports, while they spread very quickly, have short duration so they are worth less.

Try using the Stagnation Theory for your next philosophy paper. Just turn in one sheet with my email address on it and I will be happy to explain Stagnation Theory to any professor who may think otherwise. This is the best excuse anyone has ever invented to not have to write papers, and I'm giving it away for free.