Show Notes

In this electronic age the exponential growth of data is overwhelming. For organizations and individuals the flood of data that is accumulating shows no signs of slowing down…. (check out the show for more)


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Let’s take a look at how we quantify data.

Megabyte- 1,024 kilobytes. The length of a short novel or the storage available on an average floppy disk.

Gigabyte- 1,024 megabytes. Roughly 100 minutes of CD-quality stereo sound.

Terabyte- 1,024 gigabytes. Half of the content in an academic research library.

Petabyte- 1,024 terabytes. Half of the content in all U.S. academic research libraries.

Exabyte- 1,024 petabytes. It is estimated that by the end of 1999, the sum of human knowledge (including audio, video and text) was 12 exabytes.

Zettabyte- 2 to the 70th power or it can be estimated as 10 21st power

Yottabyte - 2 to the 79th power or 10 to the 24th power. If one would commit a single byte of information to store the location of every atom contained in the body of a human, it would require about 5,900 yottabytes.


“Tom Hawk, general manager for enterprise storage at IBM, says that in the next three years, humanity will generate more data--from websites to digital photos and video--than it generated in the previous 1,000 years.” [1]

In 2002, it was estimated that people produced 5 exabytes (5 billion gigabytes) of data [2]

“Holograms can theoretically store equal to one bit per cubic block the size of the wavelength of light in writing. For example, light from a helium-neon laser is red, 632.8 nm wavelength light. Using light of this wavelength, one square inch of perfect holographic storage would be able to hold 1.61×1013 bits which is about 2,014 terabytes. One cubic inch of such storage would be able to hold 8,083,729,105 terabytes.” [3]

“By 2006 they will introduce both a recording and reading device and a holographic data-storage medium, based on polymers made by Bayer MaterialScience, with a capacity of 300 gigabytes.” [4]

“InPhase promises two gigabytes of data on a chip the size of a postage stamp, or 20 gigabytes on one the size of a credit card.” Longer term the amount of data the devices can handle jumps significantly “discs with a capacity of up to 1.6 terabytes- equivalent to the content of about four million books or about 1.6 million high-resolution photographs. Such discs could be available by 2009” [4]

“The researchers' ultimate goal is to pack 100 gigabits, or 100 billion bits, into one square centimeter of chip space using the molecular memory technology… at least 1,000 times more than is possible using standard semiconductor technology” [5]




[1] The Fading Memory of the State - David Talbot -Technology Review –July 2005

[2] Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian, “how-much-info@sims.berkeley.edu”

[3]Wikipedia

[4] Funding of Innovative Startups - Andrew Madden – Technology Review- July 2005

[5] HP maps molecular memory -Eric Smalley - Technology Research News- July 2001


Music :

TechRockogy – KCentric -- http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/artistdetails.php?BandHash=6bd50fb236799fc00d1733223110f378

Look Into The Future --MISS KRISTIN --http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/artistdetails.php?BandHash=7b6612661bd1ac0b779d8f6e734a9b6b