Martin Hilbert and Priscila Lopez of the University of Southern California say that if all that data were stored on compact discs, the stack of CDs would reach beyond the moon, if the stack did not topple over. – Reuters Photo

WASHINGTON: How much information is there, really? Well, according to a new study, humans were able to store 295 exabytes of information as of 2007.

Now what, you might ask, is an exabyte? As you may recall, a bit is a single piece of information, ‘‘1’’ or ‘‘0,’’ and a byte usually contains eight bits.

An exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

Martin Hilbert and Priscila Lopez of the University of Southern California say that if all that data were stored on compact discs, the stack of CDs would reach beyond the moon, if the stack did not topple over.

That is a lot of data, and presumably we have collected a lot more since then. After all, Lopez and Hilbert estimate the storage capacity of the world’s computers doubles every 18 months.

Their findings, looking at the growth of information storage capacity from 1986 to 2007, appear in this week’s edition of the journal Science.

Naturally, it is coming out first in Thursday’s online edition of the journal, with publication on paper to come later.

Hilbert and Lopez also calculated that: In 2007 people sent 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology such as televisions and GPS. A zettabyte is equivalent to 1,000 exabytes. And that’s equivalent to every person in the world reading 174 newspapers every day.

People shared 65 exabytes of information in 2007 through two-way communication systems such as cell phones _ the equivalent of every person in the world communicating the contents of six newspapers every day.

The year 2002 could be considered the beginning of the digital age. It was the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity. As of 2007, almost 94 per cent of our memory is in digital form.

Opinion

Editorial

When medicine fails
18 Nov, 2024

When medicine fails

WHO would have thought that the medicine that was developed to cure disease would one day be overpowered by the very...
Nawaz on India
18 Nov, 2024

Nawaz on India

NAWAZ Sharif is privy to minute details of the Pakistan-India relationship, for, during his numerous stints in PM...
State of abuse
18 Nov, 2024

State of abuse

DESPITE censure from the rulers and society, and measures such as helplines and edicts to protect the young from all...
Football elections
17 Nov, 2024

Football elections

PAKISTAN football enters the most crucial juncture of its ‘normalisation’ era next week, when an Extraordinary...
IMF’s concern
17 Nov, 2024

IMF’s concern

ON Friday, the IMF team wrapped up its weeklong unscheduled talks on the Fund’s ongoing $7bn programme with the...
‘Un-Islamic’ VPNs
Updated 17 Nov, 2024

‘Un-Islamic’ VPNs

If curbing pornography is really the country’s foremost concern while it stumbles from one crisis to the next, there must be better ways to do so.