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The Sum Total of the World's Knowledge: 250 Exabytes

Posted by timothy on from the well-250-exabytes-and-this-article dept.

arkenian writes "The BBC reports on an article in Science about scientists who calculate that the sum of all the world's stored data is 250 exabytes. Perhaps more interestingly, the total amount of data broadcast is 2 zettabytes (1000 exabytes) annually. In theory this means that the sum of the world's knowledge is broadcast 8 times a year, but I bet mostly that's just a lot of American Idol reruns."

7 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Something I'd like to know is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    How much of that is pornographic "knowledge"?

    1. Re:Something I'd like to know is... by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 4, Funny

      In UNIX, that's what we used to call the "sticky bits".

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  2. In conclusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    250 exabytes ought to be enough for anybody (and everybody).

  3. Re:"Stored Data" does not equal "Knowledge" by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 3, Funny

    How dare you suggest that every byte on /b/, or every "frist psot, I for one, in soviet russia, you insensitive clod" on slashdot isn't knowledge of the first order?

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  4. Re:"Stored Data" does not equal "Knowledge" by kangsterizer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nice way to conflate terms for a sensational headline. What a bogus metric. A good chunk of that "stored data" is junk. Probably most of it. Not to mention duplication. (Duplication? I told you not to mention duplication :-)

    Sorry, i'm just increasing world's knowledge database at the moment.

  5. Zero-sum game by gmuslera · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wrong math. At best what you there have 125 exabytes of knowledge and 125 exabytes of anti-knowledge. Ok, probably the knowledge weights more than the antiknowledge, so for each scientific paper could be a hundred pages on ovnis, a thousand lolcat videos, and. well, hundreds of spam pages, but somewhat we keep going forward.

  6. Re:And a lot of it is free by Suki+I · · Score: 3, Funny

    How many Library of Congresses is that? I just have no perspective without it being expressed in LOC units.

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