Information Overload

3.6 zettabytes or a 36 followed by twenty zeros is the amount of information that an average American household consumed in 2008. That is the figure that the researchers of a University of California science project had to report. According to them the information that a family was bombarded with from communication channels like books, computers, TV, and newspapers was worth 3.6 zettabytes.

In case you are wondering just how much information that would be, imagine this. If all that information was taken as computer print outs the entire land mass of the USA would be buried under more than 2 meters of paper. And this is only the information that one single household swallowed!

The general media consumption of the average American is tagged by the same research at 34 gigabytes per day. And that figure does not include the usage of office equipment. Since 1980 consumption has increased at about 5.4% each year. And its still rising.

Each year Americans are spending more and more time processing information that is not crucial to them. About 11.8 hours in each day are spent trying to digest the information that communication channels keep throwing up. No wonder sometimes the allure of a clean break from it all on a desert island actually sounds good. Read about more interesting science projects here.