Thf Indii'idiial as an Information Pmcessing System 325 



a book was found between periods of light and of heavy use, the 

 library may not have been under real performance overload at 

 any time. Rough efforts were made to calculate the number of 

 bits of information flowing through the library. It was determined 

 that the average book title in the card catalog contains about 

 135 bits of information, and that the average reader processes 

 between 50,000 and 90,000 bits per hour of reading. 



Perhaps the most significant finding by Meier and his colleagues 

 was that a series of adjustment processes occurred, or could occur, 

 in the library to cope with the overload. He recognizes the simi- 

 larity of his list to the one presented earlier in this chapter. How- 

 ever, he found more complex forms of these adjustment processes, 

 or "policies" as he calls them, in this complicated social institution 

 with its many subsystems carrying out numerous activities. His 

 list follows: Queuing; priorities in cjueues and backlogs; destruction 

 of low priority inputs (filtering); omission; reduction of processing 

 standards (approximation) ; decentralization (a special case of use 

 of multiple channels) ; formation of independent organizations near 

 the periphery (multiple channels); mobile reserve (multiple chan- 

 nels); rethinking procedures; redefinition of boundaries of the 

 system; escape; retreat to formal, ritualistic behavior; and dis- 

 solution of the system with salvage of its assets. Whether there 

 are new adjustment processes here, or simply special cases of those 

 we have listed is a question for debate; but that such adjustment 

 policies are used, there can be no question. 



Summary of Our Research 



For five levels of organization, or systems, viewed as information 

 processing channels, the following propositions appear to have 

 support: 



a) When information input in bits per second is increased, the 

 output at first follows the input more or less as a linear function, 

 then levels off at a channel capacity, and finally falls off" toward 

 zero. We have yet to deteimine whether the larger systems have 

 a cut-off mechanism which prevents the final fall in output. 

 Though such a mechanism may delay this fall, the weight of 

 evidence suggests that it must finally occur. 



