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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."

5 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. So, then, get the backlog done. by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, then, get the backlog done.

    It is about time we have high definition copies of all old texts, like the all hieroglyphs ever documented, all Babylonian texts, all Sanskrit texts, the Dead Sea scrolls, all Medieval hand writings, etc.

    I guess all these together could not muster 1% of all the crap that is out there today. I wouldn't be surprised if all the foolish blabber-blobber-blubber on Facebook a single day outcompete all pre-1700 texts combined.

    So, back to work. Get the backlog done.

  2. 295 exabytes by slashchuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The total according to this article is 295 exabytes.

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  3. What about brains? by thestudio_bob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's my understanding that each human brain can store roughly 4-5 PentaBytes (entheogen.com). So if the human population* is about 6,775,235,741 (Google Public Data) then I think this would blow the 250 exabytes estimate out of the water.

    *Excluding Gwyneth Paltrow

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  4. Re:And a lot of it is free by arkenian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I swear I read 250 the first time I read the article. I must be getting blind as well as old. My apologies. (Although I grant, one would have hoped the editors would take the trouble to read the article and catch it.)

  5. Re:absolute value? by Facegarden · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps some of the knowledge broadcast has a negative value, so the absolute value of the knowledge broadcast is high, but the net information distributed is much smaller?

    Carl Sagan addressed this in Cosmos. He said there was more data broadcast in TV programs every day than the combined written works of all of history.

    But, as he said, "not all bits have equal value."

    A quote I had laser engraved on the back of my Nexus One. :)
    -Taylor

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