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  5. Info Overload! Billions of Bytes Born: Page 2 of 3
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Info Overload! Billions of Bytes Born: Page 2 of 3

UC Berkeley researchers say we created 5 exabytes of new digital information last year
October 29, 2003
  • Nearly 40 percent of U.S. Internet users logged into instant messaging at home last year, while 31 percent of U.S. business users logged into IM.
  • Peer-to-peer file sharing is a major part of Internet use, with KaZaA alone averaging 2 million new downloads per week. MP3 files are the most commonly shared data type, although "share" might not be the right word. Only 7 percent of peer-to-peer users provide files for downloading -- the other 93 percent are freeloaders who download only.
  • Television stations worldwide produce about 123 million hours of total programming. The researchers estimate about 31 million hours are "original" (requiring 70,000 TBytes of storage). [Ed. note: We figure the rest are "Baywatch" reruns.]
  • 92 percent of new information is stored on magnetic media -- mostly hard disks -- and 7 percent on film.
  • The U.S. creates about 40 percent of the world's new stored information, and about 50 percent of the information stored on magnetic media.

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