The following information from an article appearing on the BNET business wire website, is well worth noting. The staggering size of the Internet will affect the college, our students, faculty, library, personal lives, and economy.
"The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010 reveals the amount of information the world is creating and copying in a given year. It forecasts this entire "digital universe" through the year 2010, and it identifies the specific information types and geographies contributing to its growth. The report's findings have sweeping implications for individuals, businesses and society. The complete study can be found at: www.emc.com/about/destination/digital_universe.
Key findings:
* The 2006 digital universe was 161 billion gigabytes (161 exabytes) in size.
* IDC projects a six fold annual information growth from 2006 to 2010.
* While nearly 70% of the digital universe will be generated by individuals by 2010, organizations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85% of the information.
In 2006, 161 exabytes of digital information were created and copied, continuing an unprecedented period of information growth. This digital universe equals approximately three million times the information in all the books ever written - or the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 93 million miles from the earth to the sun. According to IDC, the amount of information created and copied in 2010 will surge more than six fold to 988 exabytes, a compound annual growth rate of 57%."
