5 'exabytes' of information created in '02 (fwd)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:47:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman () civicnet org>
Subject: toc-5 'exabytes' of information created in '02 (fwd)
X-X-Sender: <fidelman () sun10101 dn net>
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>

> ``We're drowning in a sea of information,''


5 'exabytes' of information created in '02, report
says
By Kristi Heim
Mercury News Seattle Bureau

If just keeping track of the information in your inbox
seems overwhelming, consider the task of counting all
the information the world produces in a year.

That task appealed to two masters of the megabyte,
Peter Lyman and Hal Varian, professors at the
University of California-Berkeley's School of
Information Management and Systems.

Their first project to quantify the world's
information in 2000 attracted so much interest that
they decided to count it all over again this year.

They found twice as much new information had been
created in 2002 as in 1999, the last year they
studied.

This time, they even had to employ a new term of
measurement: the exabyte, or a million terabytes. (A
terabyte is a million megabytes.)

Last year, people generated five exabytes of
information, the equivalent of a half-million new
libraries the size of the Library of Congress, they
reported.

With a world population of 6.3 billion, that's about
800 megabytes of recorded information produced per
person, which would take about 30 feet of books to
store on paper.

``We're drowning in a sea of information,'' Varian
said. ``When you look at the challenge we face, how do
we manage all this information? Our ability to capture
all that information has outrun our ability to utilize
it effectively.''

Lyman and Varian studied information stored on four
kinds of media -- print, film, magnetic (such as
computer hard disks) and optical (such as CDs and
DVDs), as well as information flowing through various
electronic channels (telephone, radio, TV and the
Internet). Their research was funded by Microsoft,
Intel, Hewlett-Packard and EMC, companies that sell
data storage and management technology.

The researchers relied on existing data such as ISBN
numbers to count books and journals, as well as
industry reports about data handled by enterprise
servers for things such as supermarket sales and
airline bookings. They performed surveys to estimate
how much unique information exists on each type of
hard drive.

More than 90 percent of the new information was stored
on magnetic media, with just 7 percent stored on film
and a fraction on paper or optical media, the
researchers found.

``All of a sudden, almost every aspect of life around
the world is being recorded and stored in some
information format,'' Lyman said. ``That's a real
change in our human ecology.''

The researchers also found that Americans are both
information powerhouses and paper hogs. The United
States produces about 40 percent of the world's new
stored information, and North Americans use almost
12,000 sheets of paper per person per year, about
5,000 more than their European counterparts.

As an economist, Varian sees a correlation between the
United States' economic activity and its information
production. But he said he thinks the value of
information should be measured by whether it helps
people make better decisions.

``We're producing all this information, but we don't
necessarily have the tools to use it most
effectively,'' he said.

Varian said he won't continue to quantify the world's
information production next year. Instead, his next
research project will involve how to get information
that doesn't exist, such as where to look for a good
plumber.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7130206.htm


=====
Betsy

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