Digital Big Bang — 161 Exabytes In 2006

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.

Comments

Suzumiya Haruhi

[alexjohnc3]

Make sure you watch out for giant crickets, especially if you visit Superior Japan.

Re:Sorry, my fault...

[iggymanz]

not to mention the random loose screw we're retaining in the white house that's full of gibberish

Identity Theory / Pythagorean philosophy

[Todamont]

I belong to a philosophical group who assert that existence IS identity, that for something to exist it must have physical characteristics which are defined and obey causality, because this is the very essence of what it means to exist. I personally follow the classic pythagorean belief that "everything is number", and that all that truly exists is information. I this sense we not only are producing information but are in turn made up from it. If you believe that the universe is finite, then there may be a total sum of all the information, but I doubt it is in the exabit range. Nature uses qbits, so there is presumably some type of wave-like uncertainty to all information, which may mean that nature itself could have a signal-to-noise ratio approaching 50%.