Posted on 12/15/2009 4:04:06 PM PST by Dallas59
Americans are known for gorging on food, but we're also gluttons of another sort: A new study finds that the average American consumes more than 34 gigabytes of video, music and words a day-and that's only on our free time.
One byte of information is equivalent to one letter of text. One gigabyte is equal to roughly 8 minutes of high definition video. Thirty-four gigabytes of data would fit on about 7 DVD disks or 1.5 Blu-ray disks.
A mix of old and new media contribute to our daily information diet, the study finds, including TV, radio, books, the Internet, movies, text messages and video games.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
And? Seriously, are they going to suggest UN sanctions unless we stop blogging? Morons.
Why so touchy? This is interesting, not a calculated attack on everything you hold dear.
Early this year, one of those morons "calculated" that each Google (or equivalent) internet search generated a fraction of a gram of CO2. So yes, we can look forward to our ISPs passing along carbon taxes to us - just wait.
Equating analogue data with digital data and expressing the results in digital terms would produce a wide variety of results.
For example, if I read the label on a shampoo bottle while in the shower, I have “consumed” only a few bytes of data from the label, but my brain is processing information across a broad spectrum of neural impulses in my eyes, ears, and skin relaying information about water flow, temperature, velocity, direction, lighting, muscle control, etc.
Plus I like to daydream in the shower ... so according to my calculations I processed over 214.97 gigabytes of information just taking a shower. (give or take a few gigs)
How much of that is pr0n?
This number is similar to the global warming number. Yes we probably take in that much data in a day - what with being able to see, hear, feel, and all that. But my broadband customers average download in a month is about 8 gigabytes. Thats for an entire month.
Is this another attempt to shame us into reducing our carbon footprint. I mean after all those 37 gigs MUST require energy which of course might cause the death of some migrating polar bear who swims too far from shore.
Illustrates why so many of us were bored sick in school.
(((34 gigabytes per day) / 12 hrs) / 60 min) / 60 sec = 825.268148 kilobytes/sec.
Sorry. I’m not buying these numbers. My DSL connection only streams at 850 kilobytes/sec and I’m not streaming video 12 hours per day!
Buy your Silicone Credits here folks
We need Cap and Trade for Silicone NOW
TT
So, the AVERAGE is 34Gig, or equivalent of 4.5 hours of video/day.
With about half of that going straight into the circular file as spam, we’re now down to the average FReeper’s daily Freeping dose. ;-)
OTOH, the “science” behind this “study” is probably about on par with the “data” and “studies” behind Climategate.
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