Sunday 13 February 2011

Data Shift

I'm a big fan of the video Shift Happens. If you haven't seen it already, take a moment to absorb some staggering statistics.

Enjoy that? I love it.
Today I found another couple of interesting statistics courtesy of this article on the BBC website.
The whole "295 exabytes of information" is, to be frank, almost meaningless. The number is too large to comprehend for mere mortals.
But further down the article there's a much more interesting (well, interesting to me) statistic: "It shows that in 2000 75% of stored information was in an analogue format such as video cassettes, but that by 2007, 94% of it was digital."
Whoah!
In seven years we went from massive majority analogue information to even-more-massive majority digital information. It's no wonder that so many industries are struggling to understand the real impact that has on their businesses.
The internet is a digitial copy machine (hat tip: Confused of Calcutta), and a very price-efficient one at that. Trying to shift your business model from one where you were the gate-keeper of a finite resource to one where you become the introducer to an infinite one is a mighty task, and it's no wonder so many industries are resorting to ever-increasing attempts at protectionism (read the blogs from any day's output on techdirt) rather than waking up to the fact that the world has changed and their business model is no longer fit for purpose.

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