Study Shows We Consume 34GB of Data Daily
Some of us spend more time online than others (guilty), but according to a recent study, the average American consumes roughly 34 gigabytes of data and information each day.
A recent study by the Global Information Industry of the University of California at San Diego looked at the year 2008 and tried to quantify how much information the average American consumes across all forms of media: TV, newspaper, internet and radio.
According to the report, Americans consumed information for 1.3 trillion hours last year, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day.
The group defined "information" as flows of data delivered to people and measured the bytes, words, and hours of consumer information.
Hours of information consumption grew at 2.6 percent per year from 1980 to 2008, due to a combination of population growth and increasing hours per capita, from 7.4 to 11.8. More surprising is that information consumption in bytes increased at only 5.4 percent per year. Yet the capacity to process data has been driven by Moore's Law, rising at least 30 percent per year. One reason for the slow growth in bytes is that color TV changed little over that period. High-definition TV is increasing the number of bytes in TV programs, but slowly.
Check out the full study here.
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There's no story here. Next...
Yeah, television, radio, etc.
There's no story here. Next...
Even if this study was valid...
Is this compressed or uncompressed? ;o)
That weould be a big difference.
Actually your comment is what is irrelevant. The article is about how much data is consumed through forms of MEDIA on average. Not how much data is processed through your actual day to day life through your eyes and ears.
Not quite, FoShizzleDizzle, not quite.
Something is not right with the study. You have 100k words per day. Sound like a lot, a veritable shit ton in fact. But to store these words on a computer as a TXT file would be about 600k, and thats on the high side (you can see how many 3 letters word I use here, can't you?).
Now, take the 100k words and store it as a spoken 64kbps MP3 mono file. Considerably bigger, as it takes about 500 minutes to actually say all those words at 200wpm. This is of course 30kS, which is a 245MB file. And thats low quality mono MP3 @ 44.1kHz. Now, try storing it as an uncompressed WAV file -- likely what the study did as our ears are the ultimate in audio anyways (proof: if one can make an audio file more precise than our ears it is a waste of information). Now this becomes 5.4GB. Our little old 600k TXT file = 5.4GB WAV file.
Now, take our 500 minute spoken interaction and add words to it. Presumably, this would be the equivelant of receiving your 100,000 words via BluRay movies all day. For shits and giggles, lets compress the audio again but do so with, say, DTS @ 1.5Mbps (yes, BD uses a higher bitrate). Roughly speaking, you can get away with 1080p at 10Mbps (BD will be higher; but this should represent most HD cable stations). Now with these parameters we're at 44.2GB.
Its fundamentally meaningless to weight different forms of data equally.
100,000 words:
600k as TXT
245MB as MP3
5.4GB as WAV
44.2GB as 1080p/DTS.
Yet the same information is there -- the 100,000 words. (One may argue, of course, the video stream attached has some information, but this still illustrates the point that information is not to be measured in bits.)
Now, your reaction is to be expected. It will likely be of the form "The study measured data, not information." Quite true. However, as you can plainly see the amount of data does not indicate whatsoever the quantity of information contained. One may use 5GB when merely 600kB sufficies. Given this, I don't understand how you can defend the study as having any purpose. The idea that we consume 34GB per day may very well be a good approximation of the actual facts, but what does it mean? It certainly does NOT indicate how much information we use. The Internet likely comprises the lowest percent of that 34GB, yet it is by far the most useful day-to-day tool. Let me see the TV answer your questions; the TV is a simple device that is one-way communication (it is a "dumb" device.)
I could do a stupid research like this too.
By the way, this study make you think that a media like a news papers actually making a different paper for every american... same for a news broadcast.
This is rubbish and mean absolutely nothing. If you want to know how much data you are using, just check your internet bill.
OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!