800 Megs of Data Per Person Last Year?

Ant writes "Growing net, computer and phone use is driving a huge rise in the amount of information people generate and use. US researchers estimate that every year 800MB of information is produced for every person on the planet. Their study found that information stored on paper, film, magnetic and optical disks has doubled since 1999. Paper is still proving popular though. The amount of information stored in books, journals and other documents has grown 43% in three years."

Comments

umm..repost

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet half this increase is due to the number of slashdot reposts also increasing over the same timespan.

Re:What about redundant information?

[t0rnt0pieces]

The article fails to address the issue of redundant information

You mean stuff like this?

Makes you feel...

[Chordonblue]

...all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't it? All that data about you and yours? Think it'll get any better? Think again.

It amazes me how much people don't think about privacy anymore. How the concept of supermarket sales has given way to 'Bonus Cards' which track what you buy. Few understand how this information can be used to piece together a bigger picture.

Some Wachovia Bank branches are now requiring a FINGERPRINT before you can cash a check. The situation is this: If you are not a customer, you are now required to give them a an electronic finger scan to cash a check made out under Wachovia.

Where does it end? Should I just give them a hair sample now or wait until my implant is required?

It's really 400.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

If everything is posted twice, like on slashdot, and like THIS story, that 800 MB is really 400 MB.

Also, if If everything is posted twice, like on slashdot, and like THIS story, that 800 MB is really 400 MB.

Re:What about redundant information?

[Davak]

Bravo.

Is a cracked version of some latest software package new data?

Honestly, only about 25k in the *.exe has been changed... but this would count as a doubling of information, hard drive space, whatever.

Likewise, when we chart medical information, we often duplicate the information from note to note to remind ourselves and others about the important aspects of the patient's history. Really...it's just data duplication.

Davak

Re:Only 800Mb per year

[bersl2]

Personally, I find that figure insulting.

I mean, I'm worth at least a gig...

This would be more interesting

[mcc]

If in generating the average they could discount the extremes.

Some of us go through a truly silly amount of data. There's a nontrivial number of people reading this discussion who exhaust their dorm's 1 GB bandwidth cap every day.

On the other hand there's somewhere a barefoot palestinian refugee child for whom not so much as a piece of paperwork was generated since he was born.

These two extremes would probably tend to distort things. It would be interesting to find out if the study was based on usage of storage data as it appears and these extremes were included in the study, or if they just (being Americans) couldn't be bothered when compiling their study to talk to geeks and starving african children. If the former, i'd be curious how their results would change if they could somehow just like chop off the ends of the bell curve.