Growing Pains

By Brad

The Wall Street Journal highlights a new report on the explosion of information online, and how it’s proving to be a challenge when it comes to storage:

In 2008 alone, IDC says the world created 487 billion gigabytes of information, up 73% from 2007. That was 3% more than it forecast at the beginning of the year.

IDC calculates the number by estimating the installed population of data-creating devices — CAT scanners, digital cameras, iPhones, RFID readers, supercomputers — and multiplying each by the amount of data each creates. Not everything has to be stored. Phone call routing information, digital TV signals and spam don’t need to be saved. But a lot of information does.

As health care records are increasingly moving online, the challenge is only going to become greater:

IBM said this week that the average individual’s health-care record, including digital x-rays and scan information, contains as many bits of data as 12 million novels.