Techlines Today

Do your part by deleting those lame birthday photos

By Adam Myers ⋅ March 12, 2008 ⋅

An IDC research report commissioned by EMC exposes a revelation that, for the first  time ever, the total volume of digital information exceeds the world’s total storage capacity. Further troubling, it is estimated that by 2011 only half of the digital world will be stored. The current estimate of 281 billion gigabytes equates to roughly 45 gigabytes for every man, woman, and child.

Anti-big brother and privacy activists will be quick to point out that the digital bits generated automatically (think security camera’s, web tracking, etc) daily are out pacing our own creations.

We discovered that only about half of your digital footprint is related to your individual actions—taking pictures, sending e-mails, or making digital voice calls," IDC senior vice president John Gantz said in a statement. "The other half is what we call the ‘digital shadow’—information about you—names in financial records, names on mailing lists, web surfing histories or images taken of you by security cameras in airports or urban centers. For the first time your digital shadow is larger than the digital information you actively create about yourself.

While the methodology of IDC’s results is unclear, it’s not shocking on the findings. As the world accelerates towards the digital medium and cloud computing it’s clear that this problem will linger quite awhile longer.

Does Grandma really need all those pictures?