Consuming "Data"

From The NY Times

Part of the Daily American Diet, 34 Gigabytes of Data
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BuzzPermalinkBy NICK BILTON
Published: December 9, 2009
The average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information each day — an increase of about 350 percent over nearly three decades — according to a report published Wednesday by researchers at the University of California, San Diego.

According to calculations in the report, that daily information diet includes about 100,000 words, both those read in print and on the Web as well as those heard on television and the radio. By comparison, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” contains about 460,000 words.

The researchers, who built their work on previous studies of information consumption, found that Americans take in data through various channels, including the television, radio, the Web, text messages and video games. Most of this time is spent in front of screens watching TV-related content, averaging nearly five hours of daily consumption.

Second is radio, which the average American listens to for about 2.2 hours a day. The computer comes in third, at just under two hours a day. Video games take up about an hour, and reading takes up 36 minutes.

Most of these experiences happen simultaneously, like talking on the phone while checking e-mail, or instant messaging while watching TV.

Overall, information consumption is increasing at about 6 percent a year, the report estimated.

“Gaming saw the biggest leap in the number of bytes we consume,” accounting for about 55 percent of the total, said Roger Bohn, a professor of technology management and co-author of the study, which is the first to consider video games part of overall data consumption.

Consumption of print media has declined consistently, Professor Bohn said. “But if you add up the amount of time people spend surfing the Web, they are actually reading more than ever,” he added.

Collectively, American households consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information of all kinds in 2008, the researchers estimated.

A zettabyte is equal to one billion trillion bytes: a 1 with 21 zeros at the end. A single zettabyte is equivalent to 100 billion copies of all the books in the Library of Congress, or as the report says, seven layers of textbooks covering the continental United States and Alaska.

Financing for the research project came from AT&T, Cisco Systems, I.B.M., Intel, LSI, Oracle and Seagate Technology, with early support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.