The Sum Total of the World's Knowledge: 250 Exabytes

arkenian writes "The BBC reports on an article in Science about scientists who calculate that the sum of all the world's stored data is 250 exabytes. Perhaps more interestingly, the total amount of data broadcast is 2 zettabytes (1000 exabytes) annually. In theory this means that the sum of the world's knowledge is broadcast 8 times a year, but I bet mostly that's just a lot of American Idol reruns."

And a lot of it is free

[commodore6502]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-air [wikipedia.org] - "Free-to-air (FTA) describes television (TV) and radio services broadcast in clear (unencrypted) form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription (or other ongoing cost)"

http://www.hulu.com/ [hulu.com] (free tv)
http://www.youtube.com/ [youtube.com] (free music vids and tv)
http://www.piratebay.org/ [piratebay.org]

Editors, please edit

[RockMFR]

The submitter messed up two of the basic details of this story - the number is actually 295, not 250, and this value is as of 2007, rather than the implied present day. (I know, I must be new here.)

Re:1 zetabyte = 1024 exabytes

[Overzeetop]

Wouldn't that be 1 zebabyte=1024 exbabytes?

*ducks*

Re:And a lot of it is free

[Ihmhi]

Well, according to the Library of Congress' website [loc.gov], they have collected "over 200 terabytes of data". But since they don't specify an exact number, let's call it at 200 TB.

295 exabytes / 200 terabytes = 1,546,649.6 Libraries of Congress [google.com].