[tt] AP: Tech Researchers Calculate Digital Info

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Tech Researchers Calculate Digital Info
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Information-Explosion.html
7.3.6

BOSTON (AP) -- A new study that estimates how much digital
information is zipping around (hint: a lot) finds that for the
first time, there's not enough storage space to hold it all. Good
thing we delete some stuff.

The report, assembled by the technology research firm IDC, sought
to account for all the ones and zeros that make up photos, videos,
e-mails, Web pages, instant messages, phone calls and other digital
content cascading through our world today. The researchers assumed
that an average digital file gets replicated three times.

Add it all up and IDC determined that the world generated 161
billion gigabytes -- 161 exabytes -- of digital information last
year.

That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to
the sun. Or you might think of it as 3 million times the
information in all the books ever written, according to IDC. You'd
need more than 2 billion of the most capacious iPods on the market
to get 161 exabytes.

The previous best estimate came from researchers at the University
of California, Berkeley, who totaled the globe's information
production at 5 exabytes in 2003. One of the sponsors of that
report, data-storage company EMC Corp., commissioned IDC's new
look.

But the Berkeley researchers had taken a different trail. They also
counted non-electronic information, such as analog radio broadcasts
or printed office memos, and tallied how much space that would
consume if digitized. And they examined original data only, not all
the times things got copied.

In comparison, the IDC numbers ballooned with the inclusion of
content as it was created and as it was reproduced -- for example,
as a digital TV file was made and every time it landed on a screen.
If IDC tracked original data only, its result would have been 40
exabytes.

Two researchers who were not involved in the study said that
because IDC used many of its own internal market analyses, the work
will be hard to replicate and confirm. Those researchers, James
Short and Roger Bohn of the University of California, San Diego,
plan to use the Berkeley methods in a follow-up report.

Bohn said it would be wise to take IDC's figures ''with a certain
grain of salt,'' but he added: ''I don't think the numbers are
going to turn out to be wildly off target.''

Considering that Berkeley's 2003 figure of 5 exabytes already was
enormous -- it was said at the time to be 37,000 Libraries of
Congress -- why does it matter how much more enormous the number is
now?

For one thing, said IDC analyst John Gantz, it's important to
understand the factors behind the information explosion.

Some of it is everyday stuff in this YouTube age -- IDC estimates
that by 2010, about 70 percent of the world's digital data will be
created by individuals. For corporations, information is inflating
from such disparate causes as surveillance cameras and
data-retention regulations.

Perhaps most noteworthy is that the supply of data technically
outstrips the supply of places to put it.

IDC estimates that the world had 185 exabytes of storage available
last year and will have 601 exabytes in 2010. But the amount of
stuff generated is expected to jump from 161 exabytes last year to
988 exabytes (closing in on 1 zettabyte) in 2010.

''If you had a run on the bank, you'd be in trouble,'' Gantz said.
''If everybody stored every digital bit, there wouldn't be enough
room.''

Fortunately, storage space is not actually scarce and continues to
get cheaper. That's because not everything gets warehoused. Not
only do e-mails get deleted, but some digital signals are not made
to linger, like the contents of phone calls. (Although, who's to
say those conversations don't get catalogued someplace, perhaps the
National Security Agency? The IDC researchers assumed the answer
was no. ''I don't want men in black coming to look for me,'' Gantz
joked.)

But even if the IDC findings don't raise the prospect that disk
drives will be virtually bursting at the seams, the study has
intriguing implications. Among them: We'll need better technologies
to help secure, parse, find and recover usable material in this
universe of data.

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On the Net:
http://www.idc.com

2003 Berkeley study:
http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003