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800 Megs of Data Per Person Last Year? 177

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-a-lot-of-data dept.
Ant writes "Growing net, computer and phone use is driving a huge rise in the amount of information people generate and use. US researchers estimate that every year 800MB of information is produced for every person on the planet. Their study found that information stored on paper, film, magnetic and optical disks has doubled since 1999. Paper is still proving popular though. The amount of information stored in books, journals and other documents has grown 43% in three years."
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800 Megs of Data Per Person Last Year? More

800 Megs of Data Per Person Last Year?

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  • umm..repost (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:13PM (#7371322)
    i bet half this increase is due to the number of slashdot reposts also increasing over the same timespan.

  • FP (Score:1)

    by jusdisgi ( 617863 )
    ...but didn't we see this the day before yesterday?
    • This is just the Slashdot editors way of taking our attention off the real news out there - the Diebold memos. They're all part of the same conspiracy to keep us "shuffling slack-jawed in the same direction."

  • because who wants to keep their personal thoughts in an outlook application...

    mwahaha, flame away!
  • The article fails to address the issue of redundant information, so this number I'm sure is inflated. It raises an interesting question though, to what extent are we becoming more redundant in our data storage? Once we answer that, we also answer exactly how much new information is being generated per person, per year.
  • It's no shock since this message is data that I'm generating, my dentist appointment generates data, my email generates data, etc.

  • redundant? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by [amorphis] ( 45762 )
    I wonder how much of that data is redundant? [slashdot.org]

    :)
  • With data/harddrives so cheap now a days, most people don't even take notice to what they are filling up. I can only see this number growing since there is very little reason not to have data for people (since the data is so cheap)
    but I'm no expert.
  • The Slashdot editors are trying to achieve 900 megs of space per user by duplicating the article over and over.

    Then they can duplicate the 900 megs article. :)

  • Makes you feel... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chordonblue ( 585047 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:17PM (#7371360) Journal
    ...all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't it? All that data about you and yours? Think it'll get any better? Think again.

    It amazes me how much people don't think about privacy anymore. How the concept of supermarket sales has given way to 'Bonus Cards' which track what you buy. Few understand how this information can be used to piece together a bigger picture.

    Some Wachovia Bank branches are now requiring a FINGERPRINT before you can cash a check. The situation is this: If you are not a customer, you are now required to give them a an electronic finger scan to cash a check made out under Wachovia.

    Where does it end? Should I just give them a hair sample now or wait until my implant is required?

    • Re:Makes you feel... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Dude, lighten up and stop being paranoid.

      The NSA doesn't care which Mary Kate & Ashley video is your favorite.

      • Re:Makes you feel... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Chordonblue ( 585047 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:58PM (#7371595) Journal
        What is it about a 'slippery slope' that you don't understand?

        You're a great example of who I mean. No consideration at all...

        • the slippery slope isn't as slippery as you think(it's more like a cliff anyways).

          totally tyrannical survey system of every individual doesn't need you to know their groceries, have logs of their habits, all you need is some weasels.

          1984 equivalent system doesn't depend on high tech, it depends on enough fucked up people. take a look on what east germany was, high tech surveillance(rfid tags, face recog cameras, whatnot) were not needed, just enough people spying each other. spying on people stepping on t

    • Where does it end? Should I just give them a hair sample now or wait until my implant is required?

      Neither. Under US law the cops don't need a warrant for anything you willfully disregard, and that extends to bodily waste. All they need to do is follow you around for a few days till they see one of yours fall, everyone loses hair constantly 24x7. Either that or they can just go through your trash [textfiles.com] and find a comb / hairbrush / kleenex, also without a warrant

      Seriously, your paranioa is way too little, way

      • "Under US law the cops don't need a warrant for anything you willfully disregard..."

        I agree, too little too late, but I wasn't talking about law enforcement; I was talking about a corporation! Big difference, or at least I think so.

        • We are all shareholders in this country, we get to vote in all 614 members of the board, the CEO, and the 9 executors. That's more than we can say for any corporation out there.

        • I was talking about a corporation! Big difference, or at least I think so.

          ROTFL, if you think there's really any kind of a line between corperations and the government nowadays, you are either living in a fantasy land, or have been asleep for the past 50 years.

          In a country where laws can be bought and sold, and rich CEOs can commit fellonys and get off scott free, the govenment *IS* a corperation.

      • Under US law the cops don't need a warrant for anything you willfully disregard, and that extends to bodily waste.
        The same applies for everyone in the country, not just cops. Also, this is a practice that I don't have a problem with. If you are discarding something, why should you have any expectation of controlling it?
        • The reason it's a problem is because this, combined with cheap DNA checking nowadays, makes EVERYONE's genetic profile available to someone with a few grand to blow.

          No one can avoid shedding DNA, it is everywhere. It shouldn't be covered under the "willfully discarded" umbrella, but since it is, all bets are off.
      • Either that or they can just go through your trash

        Where I come from (UK) it's considered theft to remove something from someone's trash without asking consent. (I got a couple of PCs from a skip outside someone's house by knocking on the door and asking politely :-> )

        So unless you're a homeless hobo, you're being tracked. Everywhere.

        Hmmmm.... Possibly. But why the heck would anyone want to track me all the time? Seriously, I can't think why.

    • now required to give them a an electronic finger

      My sentiments exactly!

  • 800 megabytes per person, and yet most people have 40+ gig hard drives... Is there something wrong here?

    • Re:Excess... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ceejayoz ( 567949 )
      Are you an idiot, or just trying to be funny?

      Ethopian refugees are counted in the "total number of people in the world", yet they probably don't own a hard drive.
      • Ethopian refugees are counted in the "total number of people in the world", yet they probably don't own a hard drive.

        I'm willing to bet the INS produces a lot of data for them (and about them) when they apply for residency under the status of refugee ...
        • I'm willing to bet it's significantly less than 800 megabytes each, unless they're taking full-length video of interviews at immigration.

  • Duplicate! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Jaeger ( 2722 ) *

    This is a duplicate story; see previous one here [slashdot.org].

  • That doesn't sound like a lot. Slightly more than 1 CD, or about 12 hours on the phone every year.
  • And how much of that data was a duplicate [slashdot.org]?

  • More and more data (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:18PM (#7371373) Homepage
    An audio producer may lay down gigs of tracks for one song. In my research lab we burn a DVD almost full of new data each day. In the hospital we record more and more detailed information into our systems.

    Sadly, an assload of this information is useless, useless, useless. I spend more time detailing information in the medical chart than I actually spend with the patient.

    In my lab, more data is better... however, when it's just useless information to keep the shark lawyers off my back it's a bad thing.

    Davak

  • Dupe! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by ^BR ( 37824 )
    http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/1 0/29/1355259 [slashdot.org] : Info Glut - Five Exabytes of Data Created in 2002
  • How about we talk about something else?

    How about them sporting events?
  • It would take 500,000 Libraries of Congress to equal five exabytes. Since when does a 'Library of Congress' qualify as a unit of storage? Yes, i realize that they were trying to give a comparison, but it looked very odd to me.
    • As discussed in this previous thread [slashdot.org] - following an article ABOUT THE SAME SUBJECT - the new unit is the Great Pyramid.

      Someone should program a calculator to convert all these units from one to another. Elephants to Great Pyramids, Great Pyramids to K-Marts, K-Marts to Libraries of Congress... Now that'd be innovation for ya !
  • News for nerds, news that reapeats....
  • I just got a banner ad (on slashdot) for slashdot. "Missed yesterday's news? Read Slashdot!" So, now the fact that you dupe stories and post old shit days, weeks, or months after the fact is a selling point?

    Where do I subscribe again?

  • It's really 400. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:22PM (#7371403)
    If everything is posted twice, like on slashdot, and like THIS story, that 800 MB is really 400 MB.

    Also, if If everything is posted twice, like on slashdot, and like THIS story, that 800 MB is really 400 MB.

  • to find out how many mb of data people write on paper per year. I suppose you'd have to take a sample of about 10000 people, then enter all the things they write in a year into some handwriting recognition program. Of course it'd take less time than normal handwriting recognition because the program would only have to scan for the number of letters, rather than what the letters actually were.
  • If it's intelligent reflected work ppl produce, I would think it's less. If it's blogging, grocery lists, Slashdot articles (yes, dupes make the number rise quite a lot probably), then that's probably a lot more than that.

    Oh well, besides, I don't really know what that amounts to, the official Internet storage unit being the Library of Congress ...
  • Doesn't that seem ... I dunno, a low? Granted, I have hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive storage filled, but I didn't create any of it ... the movie studios, TV studios, and game studios did.

    However, the stuff I do create are digital pictures. Lots of them. I take everything in 1600x1200 resolution, so each image is about 800KB, and my camera has a 128MB flash card. I fill it up quite often. I'd say I take on average 20 pics a day (which averages out to around 6 GB per year), and that's just in pictu

  • Everyone relax (Score:3, Interesting)

    by konmaskisin ( 213498 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:34PM (#7371474) Journal
    it's not like we have to read it all. Most of it is as important as receipts for toilet paper (and production, shipping and marketing data for said ass-wipe).

    The medium is the message ... and if we look for patterns we'll see the forest and know what are the important bits. Plus we'll have the ability to search for individual trees instantaneously.

    world: USING LINUX since 1991!!

    sco: SUING LINUX til 2011!!

  • This would be more interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:36PM (#7371485) Homepage
    If in generating the average they could discount the extremes.

    Some of us go through a truly silly amount of data. There's a nontrivial number of people reading this discussion who exhaust their dorm's 1 GB bandwidth cap every day.

    On the other hand there's somewhere a barefoot palestinian refugee child for whom not so much as a piece of paperwork was generated since he was born.

    These two extremes would probably tend to distort things. It would be interesting to find out if the study was based on usage of storage data as it appears and these extremes were included in the study, or if they just (being Americans) couldn't be bothered when compiling their study to talk to geeks and starving african children. If the former, i'd be curious how their results would change if they could somehow just like chop off the ends of the bell curve.
    • Your post is a little confusing. You mention the two extremes and suggest that the amount of data per person is a bell curve. By definition [stanford.edu] a bell curve is a normal distribution and is symmetric. If the distribution really is a bell curve, and you ignored your outliers, you'd have the same average of 800 megs per person . . .

      The question really should be is it a normal distribution - I would guess yes . . .
    • On the other hand there's somewhere a barefoot palestinian refugee child for whom not so much as a piece of paperwork was generated since he was born.

      While I certainly agree with your post (except for the bell curve part) - I should like to point out that I was born a barefooted palestinian refugee - though these days I utilize many gigabits a day. While your correct in the fact that many people around the world do not access technology - nor have electronic (or even paper) records on them (I, for exam

  • Hm, that's funny... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Shoten ( 260439 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:36PM (#7371486)
    I thought the pr0n I was in amounted to WAY more than 800 MB last year...
  • US researchers estimate that every year 800MB of information is produced for every person on the planet.
    The vast majority of the global population neither owns computers nor uses the internet. (Check statistics [glreach.com].) So what, exactly, is the relevance of this estimate?

  • On the edge of the Singularity (Score:3, Informative)

    by headkase ( 533448 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:45PM (#7371529)
    With information growning exponentialy, one must wonder if we're on the edge of the Singularity [caltech.edu] as anticipated by Vernor Vinge.
  • I'm pretty sure we'll have at least 800MB worth of "dupe article" posts by people who think such posts get funnier every time they do it! :\
  • Only after the last tree has been cut down
    Only after the last river has been poisoned
    Only after the last fish has been caught
    Only then will you find you cannot eat data
  • Do all the virus/worm generated mail that I get counted against my 800M since it's sent to me, or against the poor Microsoft user who didn't patch their machine in time?

    And does eliminating spam/virus email make a noticable hit in the numbers, or is it not even counted?
  • They do much more than 800MB's.

    Perhaps they are the academics of the future? ;-)

    I'm gunna marry that genious I saw the other day.
  • ...how much info is destroyed each year to offset these numbers. I mean shredded files, stuff thrown in trash, bills, deleted data files, discarded/lost storage media, etc... In the end (of each year), I wonder, what is the actual increase in stored information?
  • That's a believable number. Consider the amount of published data on Kazaa, or that 45 minutes of raw DV video is roughly 12.5 GB. Move 100 of your CD's to MP3s and you're consuming/creating roughly 3.5 GB (or more if you're using higher than 128kbps MP3s). And I'm not even commenting on pr0n.
  • I helped out a coworker a few weeks ago, by pointing out the benifits of using a compressed loss-less format (PNG) over an uncompressed one (BMP). For one image, the size was reduced down to 5% of the original size -- surprising even me (large areas were one color).

    While I used Pngcrush [sourceforge.net] to squeek out the last few %, even the moderate compression offered by Photoshop was enough to make her happy for a week.

    • Actually images with a large field of one color compress quite well. The compression algorythems sees "Oh blue again" and represents all the blue pixels as a single bit. Some just say "it's blue until I tell you otherwise" or "It's blue for the next 65242 pixels."

      Images with complex shapes compress terribly. I was out at a botanical garden trying to photograph the ends of tree branches as they fork off into millions of buds. It looks crappy in JPEG form.

  • Thats a lot of porn...

  • If you store the same image in two different resolutions, does the high-res version contain more information?


    Even if you cannot see the difference?

    • According to Claude Shannon's groundbreaking work on the subject, Information is measure by its surprise quotient. 80 bits that you are expecting to see carry no information at all. 1 bit that is a surprise is a tremendous amount of information.

      The game of scrabble is a good illustration. Common letters (a,e,i,o,u,s) have 1 point. Uncommon letters (z,x) are 10 points. All letters have a different point score based on their frequency of use in the english language. (At least for the english version of the

      • Using the notim, if you cannot tell the difference between two images than they are the same as far as the information is concerned, which seems reasonable.


        Also surprize is a relative notion. Something might be surprising to me but not to you or the other way around.

  • Seems like significant overcount (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lulu of the Lotus-Ea ( 3441 ) <mertz@gnosis.cx> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @02:21PM (#7371939) Homepage
    The thing about information is that it's not quite so easy to count as the article suggests. If the question is solely one of how many magtapes to buy, sure the exabyte thing is interesting enough. But in a "human" sense, that's not all that interesting.

    For example, the article cites 18 exabytes of what is basically analog data--sound and images--over telephone, radio, TV. It claims that 98% of that is in telephone calls, essentially all, in other words.

    First thing is that most telephone calls are not recorded. Well, I dunno, maybe Carnivore and Eschelon are even worse than I think. So mostly this is just a question of how much bandwidth AT&T and MCI need to buy; I'm sure they care about that question, but most people have no reason to. Maybe how many tape drives the NSA needs to buy too.

    Just how much information *IS* there in a telephone call though. At a certain level, ten million calls about the same snowstorm aren't really that information rich. But I understand that you want to hear YOUR sister complain about shoveling the snow, not somebody else's sister do so. But just at a technological level, how much is there to a phone call?

    If I record the call as CD-Audio WAV format it comes to something like 9 MB a minute. But then, if I compress it to MP3, or Ogg Vorbis, or AAC, I'm down to something more like 1 MB a minute. In fact, if I go for a 56k bandwidth, or something along those lines, I can probably get it down to less than half a MB... and that's not really much different from what I could discern originally on my cell-phone on a noisy street, or over my old wiring in my house. So far, we've reduced the "information content" by 20 times by purely technial means. Then again, it's not clear if this is fair... in those cop shows where they reconstruct background noises to filter the gunshot or car crash in the background, they probably want the full original data... but do *I* care about that when I talk to my sister?

    Moreover, audio compression is just the start. There's this old thing called TRANSCRIPTION that compresses quite a bit more. A stenographer (or maybe a computer program, at least at the NSA) can type up our conversation perfectly well. How much information is lost by reducing the "data" to:

    Lulu's Sister: We got over 10" of snow, and it took me an hour to shovel it.

    Even at the highest audio compression I can find, I need tens of kilobytes to encode this remark... as text we're down to a couple tens of BYTES. Maybe I've lost a little of Sis's inflection, but how much INFORMATION was there really, to start with? Some probably, but is it worth a thousand words? Moreover, I expect some lossy compression to reduce that text by at least another half.

    Depending on just what you think is information, perhaps 300,000 times compression is possible. That brings exabytes down to gigabytes. Given some automated transcription technology, maybe I can store the whole last year of family chats on my local harddisk!
  • Look at how many more of them we need just to tell us how to store things on magnetic and optical media.

    KFG
  • I mean, my thesis that I and a friend wrote, a full years work (half year x 2) was 2.2 megabyte, including front page, illustrations, graphs and tables. Yet when I digitize a short video clip from my video camera, it's literally gigabytes, at least until I compress it.

    Unless you're a hard disk manufacturer, does its size have any relation whatsoever to its value? If the figure is correct, I can store all the data I create, over my entire life (say 100 years to make it simple) on a 80GB hdd.

    Which is of cou
  • Ok.. C:\freedom is taking up 131 Megabytes already... and I expect it to grow, what with DeCSS, the Diebold voting stuff, the DEA report about the Israeli spies, etc...

    --Mike--

  • I produced 400 MBs of data on my computer, (Score:3, Funny)

    by use_compress ( 627082 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @04:40PM (#7373153) Journal
    but I pirated 80000 MBs of data.
  • From an information theory perspective, if you make a copy of a perfectly compressed 100 MB file, the amount of information you have created is just a few bytes, the copy command and the paths of the files, and even then there's a lot of redundancy. I have a large portion of my 60 GB hard drive filled with oggs, but you could just as well describe them all by listing all the albums I've ripped. That would just take a couple k, and would also be highly redundant. I've probably created well over 100 GB of
  • Seems to me there's a lot of redundant information 'round.

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