In its October 20, 2000 issue The Economist reports on a study
performed at UC Berkeley that attempted to estimate how much data is
created annually throughout the world. Here is a summary of the findings-
- 80 billion photographs at 5 MB apiece yields 400 billion MB, or about 400 petabytes.
- 4,250 films at 4 GB apiece is 17 terabytes.
- 2 billion x-rays at 8 MB apiece is about 16 petabytes.
- 610 billion emails annually in the United States.
- 576,000 terabytes of telephone calls.
- Published information (meaning movies, tv shows, books, magazine articles) amount
to 285 terabytes a year.
- Individuals create 740,000 terabytes (740 petabytes) of information a year.
- Amount of disk space sold attached to personal computers in 1999: 1 exabyte.