I’ve been waiting for this report for awhile (the last report was from 2003, produced by UC Berkely) How Much Information – now produced by UC San Diego:
[C]omputers have had major effects on some aspects of information consumption. In the past, information consumption was overwhelmingly passive, with telephone being the only interactive medium. Thanks to computers, a full third of words and more than half of bytes are now received interactively.Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet.
The report summarizes how much data an average American encounters. But going through the report, I was struck with a sense of “so what??”. I know that massive amounts of information exist. I struggle to stay current in my tiny corner of the world. What does a report – telling me I likely use 34 GB data a day – actually do for me?