6 ms·
Eric Schmidt’s "5 Exabytes" Quote is a Load of Crap
- corin_ 16y agoI wonder if anyone would be able to calculate the amount of data created in the last two millennia... and if so, how.
- simias 16y agoI guess the first issue would be to define what "data" is. Speech is data, weather is data...
- arethuza 16y ago"Data (plural of "datum") are typically the results of measurements" Weather isn't data, a measurement of temperature would be data... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data [Not that I am trying to imply that other things aren't data - but I don't think weather itself is data although you can, of course, have weather data!]
- zb 16y agoThe quote said "information", not data. Edit: "There were 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days."
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- corin_ 16y agoAs arethuza said. Obviously there would be plenty of questions, ranging from the most basic (a CD released in 1990 contains 'x' MB of data on it... but there's also the sleeve design, printed track listing etc...) to more complex (how do you measure the data of a painting in computer terms?), but I'm sure if someone were to set about trying to work this out, they could think up (albeit debatable) definitions.
- rflrob 16y agoIt's actually not all that difficult to measure the data of a painting in computer terms: get a high resolution scan and store it as a JPEG. Of course, this is open to some reasonable disagreements about what constitutes a "high resolution", but the basic principle applies. I'd suspect that it won't make a huge difference, since audio recordings take up roughly an order of magnitude* more space than still images, and video roughly an order of magnitude more information than audio. * I have no substantiation for this, but it seems about right: a JPEG is a megabyte or 2, while a single movement of a symphony is 10 or 20, and a short movie at reasonably high quality is easily 100 MB.
- Retric 16y agoThat depends on what you call a high res img. Worst case: http://articles.cnn.com/2007-10-17/us/monalisa.mystery_1_leonardo-da-vinci-painting-eyebrow?_s=PM:US http://articles.cnn.com/2007-10-17/us/monalisa.mystery_1_leo... 150,000 dots per inch, 13 light spectrums, including ultra- violet and infrared at say 10 bit per spectrum * largest painting in the world (12 384 000 square inches) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14309591/ns/world_news-weird_news/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14309591/ns/world_news-weird_new... 150 000 x 150 000 x 13 x 12 x (12 384 000 bits) = 4.71279266 exabytes
- Wawl 16y agoI would urge you to watch this video on how these kind of claims can be made : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
- ajays 16y agoThe figure I've heard is that the data generated doubles every year (here, "data" can mean web pages, logs, transactions, etc.) . Therefore, it follows that every year we create as much data as in all the previous years combined ( sum_i 2^i = 2^(i+1) ). If we created X amount of data in 2003, then, 7 years later, we're creating 128X as much data; which roughly works out to X every 3 days.
- endtime 16y ago"Doubles every year" is just a simple way of summarizing geometric growth to the layman. I'm sure info generation doubles every t, but the chance of t being very close to one year is quite low.
- mayank 16y agoOther, less dramatic kinds of growth can appear exponential in its early stages. I'm always amazed at Internet growth data that are only fit to an exponential -- "at this rate, our startup is going to take over the universe in five years!" Has everyone forgotten about logistic growth? There is probably a ceiling to most growth, wouldn't it make more sense to ask where it lies? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function
- endtime 16y agoI agree with you in general, but you picked a funny example to make this case - generation of information doesn't seem like something which will level off after a while.
- mayank 16y agoThe rate at which it is being generated might. Edit: if you think of the logistic function as modeling the rate we create information, this is one possible "story": initially there's slow growth due to technology. Then the technology picks up, and there's the exponential phase we're seeing right now. That settles into a nice linear trend as the tech matures. Finally, we hit either natural (e.g., satiation) or technological limitations and that slows the rate of growth. At the very limit, we're still creating information, but at a constant rate. The rate of growth might be near 0, but the rate of production is still bloody high.
- joubert 16y agoInteresting statistic: It has been said that 78% of all statistics are made up.
- frobozz 16y agoAnd people are 86.3% more likely to believe a statistic if it has a decimal point in it.
- sp332 16y agoRichard Feynman was giving a lecture and, as usual, had gone off-script. He mentioned some historical event, but got the last digit of the date wrong (like 1951 instead of 1957 or something). He said, "Hey! 3 significant digits is pretty good for a theoretical physicist!" :-) Edit: I can't link to the middle of a Silverlight presentation, but if you visit http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/ http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/ , click the middle (with the picture of Feynman), click Lecture 5, and skip to 17:00 in, you can see the incident. But you really should watch all of them, especially the one on Symmetry. Dang Silverlight!
- burgerbrain 16y agoBased on the primary sources I’ve been able to piece together, the more accurate (but far less sensational) quote would be: "23 Exabytes of information was recorded and replicated in 2002. We now record and transfer that much information every 7 days." Call me crazy, but that sounds every bit just as sensational to me. Seems like all this article is doing is getting overly picking with some throwaway oft-repeated trivia stat. Who cares what the exact numbers are? The purpose of the statement remains the same.
- anonymous246 16y agoOh really? Schmidt's claim overstates reality by 5000 times and you don't care? Link is to an (awesome) online calculator showing how I arrived at this. http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=ZGF5c19zaW5jZV9oaXN0b3J5X3N0YXJ0ID0gNTAwMCozNjV8ZGF5c19pbl8yMDAyID0gMzY1fG51bV9kYXlzX2Zvcl81X2V4YWJ5dGVzX3RvZGF5ID0gN3xzY2htaWR0X2dyb3d0aCA9IGRheXNfc2luY2VfaGlzdG9yeV9zdGFydCAvIG51bV9kYXlzX2Zvcl81X2V4YWJ5dGVzX3RvZGF5fHJlYWxfZ3Jvd3RoID0gZGF5c19pbl8yMDAyIC8gbnVtX2RheXNfZm9yXzVfZXhhYnl0ZXNfdG9kYXl8c2NobWlkdF9leGFnZ2VyYXRpb24gPSBzY2htaWR0X2dyb3d0aCAvIHJlYWxfZ3Jvd3RofGV4YWdlcnJhdGlvbl9vcmRlcnNfb2ZfbWFnbml0dWRlID0gM3x8fA&s=ssssssssss&v=0.9 http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=ZGF5c19zaW5jZV9oaXN0b3J5X3N0Y...
- burgerbrain 16y agoYeah, that's right. These are numbers incomprehensibly big. Nobody can even begin to mentally picture these in a reasonable fashion. The only part of the statement that is really important is the meaning, not the details of the numbers. That meaning is "we are creating shittons of data really really fast, faster than ever before". If you're getting hung up on the accuracy of the numbers used to express this, then you're missing the point, and I wonder why you don't have something better to do than get worked up about it... EDIT: Furthermore, according to the "more accurate" statement form the article, we're creating 23 Exabytes in 7 days, not 5. Read it again: "_23 Exabytes_ of information was recorded and replicated in 2002. We now record and transfer _that much_ information every _7 days_."
- turboneat 16y ago
- patrickgzill 16y agoMy tummy rumbled and I burped at 9:22AM EST this morning. Now that I have posted this: is that a piece of information? My point is that a lot of this "information" is ephemeral and not really all that important in the long run.
- vinutheraj 16y agoNow it is. Reply to the edit: If you stretch the timeline long enough, nothing is of any importance.
- HyprMusic 16y agoPerhaps the figures he was given were based entirely on computer data - and he quoted them to sound like all data?
- JonnieCache 16y agoLies, damn lies, and clichés.
- JacobAldridge 16y ago"We now create and replicate as much data in one week, as we did in one year, just a decade ago." True, not as catchy as the dawn of time, but still mighty impressive. And in fairness to their outgoing CEO, Google didn't cache much data at the dawn of time (or even in the '80s), so it can't have been that important.
- Tichy 16y agoA lot might have happened since 2002. People with digital cameras take a lot of pictures, for example. YouTube is booming. Lot's of devices generate automatic data feeds, for example location tracking from mobile phones, clickstreams on the internet. The number might still have been made up, but let's not forget that Schmidt might have some sources of information no available to the public, for example the server stats from Google and YouTube.
- fxj 16y agoinformation is not all equal. recording from /dev/random is not valuable information even though it fills up disk space. the value of information depends very much on the context.
- maeon3 16y agoYes we are creating more data now than in the history of mankind. However the ratio of (quality stored data / total data ) has gone down with the ease of storage. Most of the "data" is for entertainment.
- dvdt 16y agoHow timely! I was actually at a Google recruiting event/tech talk today at my university, where a Google engineer repeated this quote to us. Fittingly, he also misquoted it and said that 5 exabytes of data are created every day, instead of every two days as in the original quote. I looked at him askance for a moment due to the absurdity of the number--thanks for clearing it up!