The Web Runs Out of Disk Space

Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/web-runs-disk-space/
At the start of the decade, the total storage required for every web file was estimated to have reached five zettabytes. Within a few years, the world will be generating fifty zettabytes of data every year. A zettabyte is one billion terabytes ā€” or 1021 bytes. Itā€™s a lot, and hard disk manufacturers cannot keep pace with demand.

The numbers are not surprising when you consider more than four people are born every second. This is significantly higher than disk drive production. The 50Zb estimate would be exceeded if everyone on the planet uploaded just two photographs annually.

I interviewed Prof. Ali Lo who heads the Taskforce Utilizing Redundant Disk Space:

The web is at crisis point. It cannot cope with the sustained influx of new data. We have deleted temporary files, backed-up to the cloud, archived to DVDs and defragmented several times. Nothing helps: every byte is used the moment itā€™s freed.

Web Usage Breakdown

Sir Tim Berners-Lee devised the web to share research information in hyper-linked documents. Within twenty-five years, it now consists:
  • 28.65% pictures of cats
  • 16.80% vain selfies
  • 14.82% pointless social media chatter
  • 12.73% inane vlogger videos
  • 9.76% advertising/clickbait pages
  • 8.70% scams and cons
  • 4.79% articles soliciting spurious statistics
  • 3.79% new JavaScript tools/libraries
  • 0.76% documents for the betterment of human knowledge

Prof. Ali Lo stated:

There are now more pictures of cats on the web than there are cats.

Social Media Stockpile

The success of social media has exponentially increased data usage. People are expected to document their daily routine with comments, photographs and videos. Much of this content is never viewed by anyone but it remains stored forever. If a post does go viral, the same data is replicated thousands of times by different people across different networks.

The situation will worsen when Facebookā€™s Fetus project is launched. The ambitious service will automatically open an account, record a timeline and send status updates before you are born.

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Ha Ha, very funny. Happy April Foolā€™s day!

Great article - definitely the best Iā€™ve read today.

Brilliant :smile:

There are more photos of cats on tā€™interweb than real cats so thatā€™s true hehe

Very good.:slight_smile:

anagram gave it away at the start though.

Commonly known as T.U.R.D.S. I expect :smile:

Somethingā€™s wrong with the percentages. Even disregarding the fact that they add up to 100.80%, they donā€™t mention porn at all. Surely thereā€™s at least as much of that as there are pictures of cats?

They just combined that category.

So ā€œkitty pronā€? (and the world burns) :groan:

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From there, itā€™s easy to branch out into other sort of related categories.

ā€œFacebookā€™s Fetus projectā€ is very good. A rich jape, Mr B.

I know these situations can seem overwhelming, but if we all do our bit, we might save things yet. Iā€™ve just gone and deleted all my websites, killed off all my social accounts, deleted all online storage, destroyed my external hard drives and DVDs with a sledge hammer, and put an axe through my computer screen. Once Iā€™ve typed this, I am going to crush my phone with a brick.

Hope that was the right thing to do. So, whoā€™s with me?

Many people, like me, have converted to cats now.

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Have you told your dog?

You know what they say, youā€™re either a dog person or a cat person.

Shhh. No, heā€™d leave me for sure.

Nah, not true. To the world, Iā€™m very much a dog person. But in the secret confines of my study in the dark of night ā€¦ ah forget it, Iā€™m just being silly. Dogs ftw!

There are lots of cat pictures.

Also, you may want to check the fractional part of each number against itā€™s ASCII equivalentā€¦

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I refuse to believe the internet is only 28.65% consisting of cats :anguished: Great April Foolā€™s :slight_smile:

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