How Much Information is Too Much Information?

Ever wonder how much  information you consume on a yearly basis? Probably you don’t even think about it, but if you did, you would likely be shocked to know that American households consume—literally take in—3.6 zettabytes of information. How much is a zettabyte, you ask? Good question. Here’s how you get your head around it—with help from the “Counting Very Large Numbers” chart in UC San Diego’s “How Much Information? 2009” report, just released last Wednesday:

Counting Very Large Numbers

Byte (B) = 1 byte = 1 = One character of text

Kilobyte (KB) = 10 to the third power bytes = 1,000 = One page of text

Megabyte (MB) = 10 to the sixth power bytes = 1,000,000 = One small photo

Gigabyte (GB) = 10 to the ninth power bytes = 1,000,000,000 = One hour of High-Definition video, recorded on adigital video camera at its highest quality setting, is approximately 7 Gigabytes

Terabyte (TB) = 10 to the 12th power bytes = 1,000,000,000,000 = The largest current hard drive

Petabyte (PB) = 10 to the 15th power bytes = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = AT&T currently carries about 18.7 Petabytes of data traffic on an average business day

Exabyte (EB) = 10 to the 18th  bytes = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = Approximately all of the hard drives in home computers in Minnesota, which has a population of 5.1M

Zettabyte (ZB) = 10 to the 21st bytes = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

The report reminds us that the world is “awash in information and data,” the  ‘raw material’ of information. The goal of the How Much Information? Project is to create a census of the world’s data and information in 2008. How much did people consume, of what types, and where did it go?

Then again, what, exactly, is information? The reports defines it as

“Information as data that is delivered for use by a person for personal consumption (such as entertainment) For communication (like email) or for any other reason. Some data delivered to machines could also be considered information, but only if it is factored into a decision or action.”

HMI is a comprehensive look at how much information we take in. That 3.6 zettabyte (10 to the 21^st power, FYI…) from 2008 equates to about 1.3 trillion hours of information, an average of almost 12 hours per day, according to the report. I know I’m reading a lot more online, but still, 12 hours a day?  These estimates, though, came from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from the dinosaurs like newspapers and books to what’s current today—portable computer games, satellite radio and Internet video. The authors of the study, Roger E. Bohn and James E. Short, say they defined “information” as “flows of data delivered to people”…”and we measured the bytes, words, and hours of consumer information. If hours or words are used as the measurement, information sources are more widely distributed, with substantial amounts from radio, Internet browsing, and others.”

The report has a lot of interesting information in it, like these tidbits:

Previous reports on information showed much lower quantities of consumption. In the two previous How Much Information? Reports in 2000 and 2003, the studies author s estimated that only .3 zettabytes were consumed worldwide in 2007. The capacity to process data has risen at least 30 percent per year; another reason why the number of bytes has grown is high-definition TV, which increases the number of bytes in programs.

Americans spend a huge amount of time at home receiving information, an average of 11.8 hours per day.

Bytes of information consumed by U.S. individuals have grown at 5.4 percent annually since 1980, far less than the growth rate of computer and information technology performance.

Americans spend 41 percent of our information time watching television, but TV accounts for less than 35 percent of information bytes consumed.

Computer and video games account for 55 percent of all information bytes consumed in the home because modern consoles and PCs create huge streams of graphics. Based on bytes alone, however, computer games are the biggest information source–18.5 gigabytes per day for the average American consumer, or about 67 percent of all bytes consumed. Approximately 80 percent of the population plays some kind of computer game.

What’s it all mean? Hard to say. “There are several hundred million TV sets in the U.S., and depending on whom you ask, about 50 million smartphones,” explained report co-author James Short, research director of UCSD’s Global Information Industry Center. “And new media devices are increasingly personal devices – mobile phones, Kindles and handheld gaming devices – with small screens and relatively low resolution, limiting the number of bytes consumed.”

What is clear, said Internet pioneer Larry Smarr, who directs the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at UC San Diego and UC Irvine, is that we consume “orders of magnitude more information than can be stored on hard drives or transmitted over today’s Internet.”  Smarr says even small changes in how we consume our information could have serious implications for network planners, involving complicated, large-scale investments.