The Information

The digital age does not count on its fingers

Computers clump zeros and ones into packets of eight called ' Bytes', but  to speak of Kilobytes is an insult to the Binary System. When Ubergeeks talk kilobytes , they are not referring to thousands of the things , but two to the tenth power of them--  32 times 32 is 1024 , not 1000

In 2002 , Roy Williams pointed out that any Richter Scale defining the quantitative impact of Information will err by millions if gigabytes are rounded off to eight billion bits- Yet as this list illustrates, a million isn't what it used to be: 

• A bit is the information in one coin toss - yes or no, 1 or zero, win or lose.
• A byte is 8 bits ; 5 bits approximate the information in the letter A.
• A kilobyte is about one handwritten page.
  • 50  kilobytes: The Constitution of the United States
  • 75 kilobytes:  Executive Summary of new UN global warming report
  • 250 kilobytes: an editorial cartoon
• A megabyte is  2²⁰ bytes
  • 1 megabyte: a rather short novel .
  • 2 megabytes: a sharp color photograph.
  • 5 megabytes: Shakespeare's Works
  • 25 megabytes The actual UN global warming report
  • 100 megabytes: A yard of books.
  • 500 megabytes: a CD
• A gigabyte is  2³⁰ bytes
  •   1 gigabyte : the human genome , or a ton of books.
  • 10 gigabytes: a  BlueRay DVD of The Matrix Trilogy
  • 20 gigabytes: The Complete Mozart in very high fidelity
    
  • 250 gigabytes: the ground floor of Harvard's Widener Library
    
• a terabyte is  2⁴⁰ bytes.
  • ~ 1 terabyte: the sum of all Federal , State and City regulations
  • 2.5 terabytes: Everything in Widener Library.
  • 5 terabytes: every article in every academic journal printed last year.
  • 10 terabytes: The Library of Congress.
  • 40 terabytes: every word in all the hardcover books printed last year
    
  • 50 terabytes: all of last year's mass market periodicals.
  • 60 terabytes: all the audio CDs sold last year.
  • 150 terabytes: all  the newspapers printed in 2006.
• A petabyte is ~ 10¹⁵ bytes--2⁵⁰ to be exact.
  • 1 petabyte:   last year's global production of office documents.
  • 3 petabytes: all the libraries in America.
  • 10 petabytes: all the film Hollywood ran through its cameras in 2006
  • 400 petabytes: every snapshot taken in 2006
• An exabyte is  2⁶⁰ bytes . 
  • 2 exabytes: the capacity of all hard disks produced last year
    
  • 5 exabytes: every word so far spoken.
    
  • 6 exabytes: the DNA of everyone living
  • 10 exabytes: everything on videotape
• A zettabyte is the estimated total cell phone pixel capture by the year 2018
• A yottabyte is how many atoms can dance on the head of a terapin.

Comments

[Mailanka]

Of course the digital age counts on its fingers! It just counts more effeciently! Imagining each finger as either up or down (on/off), you can store up to five bits of information on one hand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary

Using that method, it's possible to count to over a thousand on two hands... far better than a mere ten, hmm? :)

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