Global Capacity, Digitization, and Trends
In a recent study in Science it was estimated that the world's technological capacity to store information in analog and digital devices grew from less than 3 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986, to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007, doubling roughly every 3 years.
In a less comprehensive study, the International Data Corporation estimated that the total amount of digital data was 281 exabytes in 2007, and had for the first time exceeded the amount of storage.
It is estimated that the year 2002 marked the beginning of the digital age for information storage, which means that this years marked the date where human kind started to store more information on digital, than on analog storage devices. In the year 1986, merely 1% of the world's capacity to store information was in digital format, which grew to 3% by 1993, 25% in the year 2000, and exploded to 97% of the world's storage capacity by 2007.
Read more about this topic: Data Storage Device
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