Global Information Storage Calculated

Mankind's ability to store the huge amount of data in the world has been deliberate by scientists.

The study, published in the biography Science, calculates the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes.

That is the homogeneous of 1.2 billion median hard drives.

The researchers distributed the figure by calculating approximately the amount of data hold on 25 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books.

"If you were to take all that data and store it in books, you could casing the whole area of the US or China in 3 layers of books," Dr Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California told BBC News.

Computer storage has traditionally been deliberate in kilobytes, then megabytes, and right away often gigabytes. After that comes terabytes, petabytes, then exabytes. One exabyte is a billion gigabytes.

The same data stored digitally on CDs would emanate a smoke-stack of discs that would attain over the moon, according to the researchers.

Scientists distributed the figure by calculating approximately the amount of data hold on 60 equivalent term and digital technologies during the time from 1986 to 2007. They considered all from P.C. hard drives to outdated floppy discs, and cat-scan drive-in theatre to microchips on credit cards.

The consult covers a time well known as the "information revolution" as human societies passing from one to another to a digital age. It shows that in 2000 75% of stored data was in an equivalent term format such as video cassettes, but that by 2007, 94% of it was digital.

"There have been other revolutions before." Dr Hilbert told the BBC's Science in Action programme.

"The automobile altered the public completely, or electricity. All 40, 50 or 60 years something grows faster than anything else, and right right away it's information.

"Basically what you can do with data is broadcast it by space, and you call that communication. You can broadcast it by time; you call that storage. Or you can renovate it, control it, change the meaning of it, and you call that computation."

Other results from the universal consult uncover that you broadcast around two zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 1000 exabytes). That's the homogeneous of 175 newspapers per person, per day.

The fastest flourishing area of data strategy has been computation. During the two decades the consult covers, universal computing ability increased by 58% per year.

These figures might seems large, but they are still lilliputian by the data estimate and storage ability of nature.

"The Human gene in one singular body can store around 300 times more data than you store in all our technological devices" according to Dr Hilbert.

This investigate looked at the world as a whole, but the scientists say that it does uncover that the "digital divide" between abounding and bad countries is growing. Despite the expansion of computers and mobile phones, the ability to routine data is apropos more unequal.

In 2002 people in the created world could talk 8 times more data than people in the building world. Just 5 years later, in 2007, that hole has scarcely doubled, and people in richer countries have 15 times more data carrying capacity.

The investigate moreover pinpoints the attainment of the digital age as 2002, the initial year worldwide digital storage ability overtook equivalent term capacity.

Hear more about the investigate on Science in Action on the BBC World Service .