There’s a claim– I found it first in one of Geoff “Nunberg Error” Nunberg’s articles– that before they were all put on CDs, the documentation for a 747 weighed more than the plane itself. I’ve also heard the claim that the average person today deals with more information in a day than someone in the 17th century dealt with in their entire lives.

I wonder if you could make– and more important, mobilize some kind of data to validate– the claim that today’s Internet users spend more time online than yesteryear’s computer professionals. Say, “The average 12 year-old spends more time each year connected to the Internet than everyone using the Internet did in 1971.” Or, “My iPhone will perform more calculations figuring out directions to the HP Pavillion in San Jose than Isaac Newton made in his whole life.”

Both of these sound truthy, to use Steven Colbert’s famous phrase. Maybe that’ll be reason enough for some readers to pick up these claims, or make up their own, and start Tweeting them as if they were true.