A study presented in 2019, using the tools of Claude Shannon’s information theory, concluded that across 14 representative human…
A study presented in 2019, using the tools of Claude Shannon’s information theory, concluded that across 14 representative human languages there is a fundamental limit to the data-rate of speech. No matter who we are or what we’re talking about, or how fast our language is spoken, on average we transmit information no faster than 39 bits per second. Given the very different encoding strategies that different languages employ, the researchers point to the limitations of human biology as the bottleneck, specifically how quickly we can actually gather our thoughts in order to transmit them.
Caleb Scharf. 2021. The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, And Life’s Unending Algorithm. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.