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Digital Big Bang — 161 Exabytes In 2006

Posted by kdawson on from the had-we-but-world-enough-and-room-to-store-it dept.

An anonymous reader tips us to an AP story on a recent study of how much data we are producing. IDC estimates that in 2006 we created, captured, and replicated 161 exabytes of digital information. The last time anyone tried to estimate global information volume, in 2003, researchers at UC Berkeley came up with 5 exabytes. (The current study tries to account for duplicating data — on the same assumptions as the 2003 study it would have come out at 40 exabytes.) By 2010, according to IDC, we will be producing far more data than we will have room to store, closing in on a zettabyte.

3 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. And here I thought Malthus was dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We won't be running out of space just like we didn't run out of food. New technology will allow us to store ever more data.

  2. The awesome information we retain by iPaul · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Web server log files with the history of people clicking around. My address stored by everybody I ever bought anything on line from. It's more an information land-fill than an information warehouse.

    --
    Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
  3. Low SNR by Jekler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As interesting as the sheer volume is, most of it is garbage. I'd rather have 50 terabytes of organized and accurate information than 500 exabytes of data that isn't organized, and even if it were, it's accuracy is questionable at best. In essence, even if you manage to find what you want, the correctness of that information is likely to be very low.

    I've long said we are not in the information age, we are in the data age. The information age will be when we've successfully organized all this crap we're storing/transmitting.