tuumilla

Tuumilla is a proposed unit of measurement for the concept of information, specifically aiming to quantify the impact or significance of a piece of information. It is not a standard or widely adopted unit within the scientific community. The concept of tuumilla was introduced by researcher and author Jaron Lanier in his book "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now."

The idea behind tuumilla is to create a metric that goes beyond simple data volume. Instead of measuring information in bits or bytes, which represent the raw storage size, tuumilla seeks to capture how much an individual's perception or understanding is altered by the information. A high tuumilla value would indicate information that is particularly impactful, memorable, or influential, while a low value would suggest information that is trivial or easily forgotten.

Lanier suggests that social media platforms, by prioritizing engagement and virality, often amplify information with low tuumilla values, leading to a deluge of superficial content. Conversely, information that might be profoundly meaningful but less attention-grabbing could be overlooked. The development and formalization of a tuumilla unit would require a robust theoretical framework and empirical methods to measure perceptual change, which are currently lacking. Therefore, tuumilla remains a conceptual tool for discussing the qualitative value of information rather than a practical unit of measurement.