It's getting pretty crowed out there.
In 2005, about 10 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1018 bytes) of new information was produced and stored worldwide, roughly equal to 74,000 times the 17 million books in the United States Library of Congress.
Compare this to the estimate that in 1999 the sum total of recorded human knowledge, music, images and words amounted to only 12 exabytes.*
These figures are pretty mind-blowing.
With the take-up of broadband people are really starting to upload content to the web, rather than just consume it. The problem is computers and networks weren't designed for people to upload large files (compare the upload and download specs on your computer). When the protocols were decided, no-one imagined what possibilities digital technology would release. How the 'network constraints' will cope with the flood of consumer generated content is something of a headache for the boffins and companies like YouTube.
(*Source: UC Berkeley, School of Information Management and Systems)
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