Knowledge experiences exponential growth

On Monday, researchers at the University of California evaluated, and contributed to, the information glut with the release of their report "How much information? 2003," which pegs the quantity of new information stored in 2002 at 5 exabytes, or 5 quintillion bytes.

That, said researchers at UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems, amounts to the print collections of the Library of Congress -- 500,000 times over.

Still, while large, the 5 exabytes of stored information pales in comparison to the amount of information transmitted electronically in 2002, which the study estimated to be 18 exabytes.

The vast majority of that total -- 98 percent -- was sent over telephone networks, both wireless and landline, in the form of data and voice.

The UC researchers estimated that stored information had doubled since its last study, which looked at the year 1999 and was released in 2000.

The new data about new data squares with both conventional wisdom and other studies that show Web usage continuing to grow despite the chaos that has characterised economies fuelled by that growth.

But the study counted more than just Web and Internet information. It sought to canvas four storage media (print, film, magnetic and optical) and four channels (telephone, radio, television and the Internet).

Unsurprisingly, computers won out in the storage category: 92 percent of newly generated information was recorded on magnetic media like hard disks.

Paper, by contrast, accounted for a hundredth of a percent of the total. The study's authors pointed out that the amount of information stored on paper, while dwarfed by that stored by way of other media, is still increasing.

Nationally, the United States produced a substantial amount of the stored information -- about 40 percent, with fully half of that stored on magnetic media.

Radio and TV broadcast content added a negligible amount of new information, as most information disseminated through those media is recycled, according to the report. Only 70 million of the 230 million radio hours in 2002 consisted of new content, and only 31 million of the 123 million TV hours.