Legal Research

The Digital-Analog Tipping Point was 2002

By admin

Some interesting numbers and estimates in this posting from the 21st Century Fluency Project about a report by researchers, Martin Hilbert from the University of Southern California and Priscila López of the Open University of Catalonia:

Humanity’s Shift from Analog to Digital Nearly Complete

“The tipping point came in 2002 ? that was when the world began storing more information in digital than in analog format”

In 2000, three-quarters of the world’s information was still in analog form. By 2007, all but 6 percent had been preserved digitally.”

“At this rate, computers by the end of the century will have the “computational power and ability to store as much information as that which can be stored in the molecules of all humankind’s DNA”"

“As of 2007, the latest year that Hilbert reviewed, humankind was able to store 295 trillion optimally megabytes, to communicate almost 2 quadrillion megabytes, and to carry out 6.4 trillion MIPS (million instructions per second) on general-purpose computers. Have a hard time imagining 295 trillion megabytes? Hilbert suggests thinking of it this way: “If we would use a grain of sand to represent one bit each of the 295 trillion, we would require 315 times the amount of sand that is currently available on the world?s beaches.”"

“295 trillion megabytes is roughly:
- Equivalent to 61 CD-ROMs per person on Earth. Piling up the imagined 404 billion CD-ROM would create a stack that would reach the moon and a quarter of this distance beyond.
- Enough that, if printed in newspapers that sold for $1 each, the United States’ entire global Gross Domestic Product would not be enough to buy them all. (The cost would be 17 percent beyond the GDP.)
- Enough information to cover the entire area of the United States or China in 13 layers of books.”

“”In the year 2000, 75 percent of all information was still in analog format, mainly analog video cassettes (like VHS),” Hilbert said, “and in 2007, 94 percent of our global technological memory consisted of digital bits and bytes. This is nothing more than a blink of an eye in historical perspectives.”"

People better with numbers than me can argue the finer points but wow.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on February 18, 2011 (boomark / email).