I define "raw information", as used in other parts of the model, more precisely, in ways that are supposed to map onto Shannon-information or Kolmogorov information. I used the phrase "tech level" because my initial expectation is that power is proportional to the log of raw information. Some of my data concerning the rate of progress instead uses something with a meaning more like "perceived social change" or "useful information", which I called "tech level", and seems to be the log of raw information.

It may be that "useful information" really is Shannon information, and "raw information" is uncompressed, redundant information; and that this accounts for observations that "useful information" appears to be the log of "raw information". For instance, we have an exponential increase in the number of genes sequenced; but probably a much-less-than-linear increase in the number of types of genes known. We have an exponential increase in journal articles published; but the amount of independent, surprising information in each article may be going down.