A Dangerous Thing

Reading the Discover article, How Much Does the Internet Weigh? is a dangerous thing as it leads one to asking, How much does the yearly output of digital data weigh? Using the article as reference, a guesstimate as to how much the world's digital data weighs becomes possible.

In 2007, the estimated volume of data produced will be 161 Exabityes Note:The IDC figure comes from Baseline's ProForma - April 2007

In 2010, the estimated volume of data produced will be 988 Exabityes Note:The IDC figure comes from Baseline's ProForma - April 2007

For 2007, the dataset weight will be equivalent to a midsized pebble.
For 2010, the dataset weight will be equivalent to a large pebble.

When looking at these results, one sees that the web routinely passes through almost 10% of the world's digital output (Web-14.6 Exabytes/Data-161 Exabytes=9.06%) on a yearly basis.

"God I love this country!" - R. Moran