How much information 2003

We view this as a "living document" and intend to update it based on such contributions. Preferred citation: Lyman, Peter and Hal R. Varian, "How Much Information", Release date: October 27, How Much Information? Paper Film Magnetic Optical.

Broadcast Telephony Internet. Exec Summary. The traditional media of radio and TV still dominate our consumption per day, with a total of 60 percent of the hours. In total, more than three-quarters of U. Despite this, computers have had major effects on some aspects of information consumption. In the past, information consumption was overwhelmingly passive, with telephone being the only interactive medium. Thanks to computers, a full third of words and more than half of bytes are now received interactively.

Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from to , because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet. See authors' blog for discussion and additional information about the report. How much information? Global Information Industry Center. Access Rights Type :. Strikingly it estimated that each person in the U. This was more than three times the data per capita that the same research project calculated was being produced in The remaining data in this entry of the database is quoted from the website:.

Newly created information is stored in four physical media -- print, film, magnetic and optical --and seen or heard in four information flows through electronic channels -- telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet.

This study of information storage and flows analyzes the year in order to estimate the annual size of the stock of new information recorded in storage media, and heard or seen each year in information flows.

Where reliable data was available we have compared the findings to those of our study which used data in order to describe a few trends in the growth rate of information. Image Source: esd. The remaining data in this entry of the database is quoted from the website: "How much new information is created each year?

Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks. How big is five exabytes? If digitized with full formatting, the seventeen million books in the Library of Congress contain about terabytes of information; five exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in 37, new libraries the size of the Library of Congress book collections.