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

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."

Comments

And a lot of it is free

[commodore6502]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-air - "Free-to-air (FTA) describes television (TV) and radio services broadcast in clear (unencrypted) form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription (or other ongoing cost)"

http://www.hulu.com/ (free tv)
http://www.youtube.com/ (free music vids and tv)
http://www.piratebay.org/

Re:And a lot of it is free

[__aamnbm3774]

I love how the first thing you see, when you click the link, is that the article says 295 exabytes, not 250.

Re:And a lot of it is free

[Suki I]

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

Re:And a lot of it is free

[Ihmhi]

Well, according to the Library of Congress' website, they have collected "over 200 terabytes of data". But since they don't specify an exact number, let's call it at 200 TB.

295 exabytes / 200 terabytes = 1,546,649.6 Libraries of Congress.

Re:And a lot of it is free

[arkenian]

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.)

Something I'd like to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of that is pornographic "knowledge"?

Re:Something I'd like to know is...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

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

absolute value?

[bth]

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?

Re:absolute value?

[Facegarden]

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

"Stored Data" does not equal "Knowledge"

[sgage]

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 :-)

Re:"Stored Data" does not equal "Knowledge"

[$RANDOMLUSER]

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?

Re:"Stored Data" does not equal "Knowledge"

[kangsterizer]

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.

So, then, get the backlog done.

[G3ckoG33k]

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.

Editors, please edit

[RockMFR]

The submitter messed up two of the basic details of this story - the number is actually 295, not 250, and this value is as of 2007, rather than the implied present day. (I know, I must be new here.)

295 exabytes

[slashchuck]

The total according to this article is 295 exabytes.

Well, its certainly a number.

[RyanFenton]

...not meaningful in terms of the headline. The number is just addressing storage capacity potential available, not as unique meaningful data. All its saying is that the average person has access to x terrabyes of digital storage. That number is just taking manufacturing numbers for electronic hardware, and dividing by number of people.

It's not addressing the actual complexity generated or used by people. It's not actually addressing any actual people or what they do.

There is, however an interesting deeper meaning behind a number like this - the more this number multiplies, the harder it is going to be to control information, as people have more and more diverse options for storing and transferring data.

This means that even as processing power multiplies - it becomes even more impossible to police all the data of the world for improper uses.

That's the more interesting aspect of this number.

Ryan Fenton

Re:1 zetabyte = 1024 exabytes

[Overzeetop]

Wouldn't that be 1 zebabyte=1024 exbabytes?

*ducks*

What about brains?

[thestudio_bob]

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

Re:In conclusion

[Surt]

38 Gigabytes per person is enough? I don't think so.