# Five exabytes created in 2002. Still nothing good on TV. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 29, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325 "2003-10-29T22:09:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/1 "2003-10-29T22:09:00Z")
[Five exabytes of new data were created in 2002.](http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/10/29/1355259.shtml?tid=137&tid=188&tid=198) – That is 5E18\* bytes of unique information. _(xE_y\* == \*x\*\*10[sup]_y_[/sup]) According to the [UC-Berkeley](http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm#summary) website: > [@](#): > > _How big is five exabytes?_ If digitized, the nineteen million books and other print collections in the Library of Congress would contain about ten terabytes of information; five exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in half a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress print collections So, as measured by the semi-standard metric for data storage (the US Library of Congress, or LoC), we created 500,000 LoCs in 2002. That’s 5E5 times the amount of data contained in the LoC. To put that number in semi-human terms, thats 800 MB (mega-bytes, where mega-_x_ is equal to _x_E6)\* per human on Earth (roughly 6 billion). 800 MB was the capacity of a good-sized hard drive less than five years ago, and it was an amount of storage quite beyond practicality less than thirty years ago. \*(I didn’t choose the prefixes. UC-Berkeley did. I would have chosen the base-two exbi- (2[sup]60[/sup]) and mebi- (2[sup]20[/sup]), but I didn’t run the study.) Suddenly, hard drive manufacturing looks like a huge growth industry. 🙂 Of course, the Good Scientist put it best: > [@](#): > > All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value. --Carl Sagan ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/2 "2003-10-30T01:57:59Z")
From the study: > [@](#): > > There are about 2.9 million active weblogs (‘blogs’), containing about 81 GB of information. Wow. I could fit all the blogs in the world on my computer eight times over! > [@](#): > > The typical American consumer now generates some 100 gigabytes of data during his or her lifetime, including medical, educational, insurance, and credit-history data I found the following odd: > [@](#): > > In making assumptions about the size of analog video tape stores we have chosen to make conversions assuming the use of MPEG-2 video compression standard. > \ > The actual amount of compression that can be achieved with MPEG-2 varies quite a bit, we have assumed that 2 gigabytes is adequate to represent 1 hour of high-fidelity audio and high-definition video data. That seems fair, but then: > [@](#): > > In translating the vast quantity of audio information available on cassette tape into its digital equivalent, we have chosen to use the CD format, linear PCM audio at a 16-bit word length and 44.1kHz sample rate. Why count all the analog video as lossy compressed when making your tallies, but then count all audio cassettes as uncompressed PCM? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/3 "2003-10-30T05:52:39Z")
**neutron star** : I’d bet (almost) anything that they mean 81 GB _each_. Your interpretation simply makes no sense (What, each blog only contains 28 KB? I run programs bigger than that!). Blogs as a whole, according to (my interpretation of) their numbers and my trusty HP-48GX, account for 2.349E17 bytes, or 234.9 PB (petabytes), or more than all printed material (200 PB). Which seems a bit high, but more reasonable than 81 GB. (But if you have a hard drive that can contain 2E18 bytes, or 2 EB (exabytes), I’m sure the Library of Congress would love to make a few (200,000) backups of itself. 😉 (Oh, you could also just barely fit in the total information output of 1999. Your call.)) As for their other decisions, I’m betting it made the math easier. You can hardly blame them. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/4 "2003-10-30T08:26:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Derleth \* > **neutron star: I’d bet (almost) anything that they mean 81 GB _each_. Your interpretation simply makes no sense (What, each blog only contains 28 KB? I run programs bigger than that!).** 81GB of text for each user? I have a 200-page ebook that’s 1.4MB. At that rate, each blogger would have to write 11.5 million pages to fill up 81GB apiece. Read the study. Page 97 of the PDF: > [@](#): > > If each blog is 50 KB, then the total size of the active blogosphere is 81 GB. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/5 "2003-10-30T10:46:52Z")
How many kiloquads would this be? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/6 "2003-10-30T15:01:54Z")
As soon as I figure out how to make decent DVD menus, I’ll start working on the ‘lack of good TV’ problem. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/7 "2003-10-30T15:20:22Z")
**neutron** : But don’t blogs contain images and massive flash animation and their author’s egos and … ? OK, I didn’t read the study. Grabbing PDFs on a dialup can be painful. But I’ll admit that I began to doubt my own post when I suddenly realized that, by my numbers, blogs would account for 40% of all new information created in 2003. I didn’t think the year was _that_ dull. The notion of you having room to store all of the blogs on your PC is cool, though. I could on mine and have a good fraction of one drive free and one whole drive unused. 81 GB simply isn’t what it used to be, eh? ---
**Author:** ![heresiarch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@heresiarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heresiarch)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/five-exabytes-created-in-2002-still-nothing-good-on-tv/210325/8 "2003-10-30T19:23:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by neutron star \* > \*\*Wow. I could fit all the blogs in the world on my computer eight times over! \*\* Waitasec. Your computer has (more than) 648 GB of disk space? Is that a PC? That’s impressive, but I think you ought to add another 400GB (or whatever) to take you to the one terabyte level. For no reason beyond bragging rights. C’mon… consider it a geek dare! 😉