Science Daily has a story about “the world’s total technological capacity — how much information humankind is able to store, communicate and compute.” It cites some unimaginably big numbers. But what was most striking is this last sentence:
Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. (Yes, that’s a number with 20 zeroes in it.)
Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that’s a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That’s 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it’s still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.
via How much information is there in the world?.
HT: Joe Carter