Statistics: "Daily Deluge of Digital Data Expected to Get Even Worse"

Resources From EMC.com (Sponsors of the Report)

1. Summary/News Release/Findings

2. Infographic: The Digital Universe Study
3. Infographic: Data Management Increase, Need for IT Workers

From a San Francisco Chronicle/Bloomberg Article:

A study released [on Monday] quantifies how quickly the digital universe is expanding.

The world’s information is doubling every two years, with an astonishing 1.8 zettabytes being created and replicated in 2011, according to IDC.

That’s a whole lotta blog posts, e-mails, MP3s and photos to fit into a virtual shoe box.

That much information – equal to 1.8 trillion gigabytes pocketed in 500 quadrillion files – is roughly the same as:

•  Every person in the United States sending three tweets per minute for 26,976 years nonstop.

• More than 200 billion two-hour high-definition movies. Grab a bucket of popcorn because it would take a movie lover 47 million years to finish that film festival.

• Digital preservation has and will continue to be even more critical than it already is.  Dealing with the actual storage (will it be accessible in the future?), managing formats, organization and retrieval, funding, etc.

• Digital Literacy. With more and more info becoming available retrieval (searching/finding/accessing) and analysis by the user for currency, reputation of sources, etc. will become even more essential skills.  Plus, making sure those who want access to the info (for many, access to the Internet) will also become more important on a global level. Who will be teaching these skills?  Who should be teaching them?
• Making sure that you have the knowledge, skills, and resources to preserve and at any time be able to access your own?digital data will continue to grown in importance. Where should these skills be taught and updated as new resources become available? Who should be teaching them?

Filed under: Data Files, Digital Preservation, Funding, Management and Leadership, News, Preservation