How Much Data Is There In The World? And What Is A Zettabyte?
I have read the following passage just recently:
More information was generated in 2001 that in all the previous existence of our species on earth. In fact, 2001 doubled the previous total. And 2002 doubled the amount present in 2001, adding around 23 “exabytes” of new information —roughly the equivalent of 140,000 Library of Congress collections. Growth in information had been historically slow and additive. It was now exponential.
Martin Gurri, “The Revolt of the Public” 2nd edition 2018, page 17
What is an exabyte? It is 1,024 petabytes.
What is a petabyte? It is 1,024 terrabytes.
What comes after exabyte? Zettabyte: 1,024 exabytes. One zettabyte contains the equivalent of one trillion books. In mid-2019, the Internet was at 5 zettabytes. This is expected to grow to 175
zettabytes by 2025, says the following video:
If the video is deleted, click here.
And all this started only in 1990 when Tim Berners-Lee set up the first website, click here. Only six years later, everyone with a computer had the Netscape explorer, mostly under Windows 3.11.
Conclusion
We live in unbelievable times. Information is mostly free. And the amount of free information grows exponentially.
If someone tells you that we live in the Zettabyte decade, you know what could be meant.
You are now ready for reading this short Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte_Era