It’s mind-boggling to think that humans are creating so much data. Or is it? Think of how much data you’re generating in an average day.

1. There In The World?
How Much Data Is

2. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
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If you’re roughly the same age as me, you might remember buying a laptop in the
2000s that came with around 40GB of data. ‘Wow, that’s a LOT of storage!’ we all
thought at the time. Now, even the most basic smartphone comes with around 30GB of
data storage, while a top-of-the-range iPhone has more than 500GB.
But the days of being impressed by gigabytes are long gone. As the amount of data in
the world has increased exponentially, we’ve had to come up with new, unfamiliar words
to describe data in numerical form. So long, gigabytes. These days, we’re talking
terabytes, petabytes, exabytes and zettabytes.
How Much Data Is There In the World?

3. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
A terabyte is just over 1,000 gigabytes, and is a label most of us are familiar with from our
home computers.
Scaling up from there, a petabyte is just over 1,000 terabytes. That may be far beyond the
kind of data storage the average person needs, but industry has been dealing with data in
these sorts of quantities for quite some time. In fact, way back in 2008, Google was said to
process around 20 petabytes of data a day (Google doesn’t release information on how much
data it processes today). To put that in context, if you took all of the information from all US
academic research libraries and lumped it all together, it would add up to 2 petabytes.
Scaling up again, you have exabytes (roughly 1,000 petabytes) and zettabytes (a little over
1,000 exabytes). At this stage, it becomes hard to comprehend what any of this means in real
terms. Try this: according to a Cisco estimate, the world’s collective internet usage reached
one zettabyte in 2016. That’s a lot of cat videos being viewed!
So, as the world’s data has grown, we’re now talking about data in terms of zettabytes.
You lost me at petabyte…

4. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
How many zettabytes have been created so far?
According to market intelligence company IDC, the ‘Global Datasphere’ in 2018 reached 18
zettabytes. This is the total of all data created, captured or replicated. (Not all of this data is
being stored and kept, though.)
The vast majority of the world’s data has been created in the last few years and this
astonishing growth of data shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, IDC predicts the world’s
data will grow to 175 zettabytes in 2025.
Let’s dwell on that for a second: 175 zettabytes. What does that even mean? According to
IDC’s ‘Data Age 2025’ paper:
• If you were to store 175 zettabytes on DVDs, your stack of DVDs would be long
enough to circle Earth 222 times.
• If you attempted to download 175 zettabytes at the average current internet
connection speed, it would take you 1.8 billion years to download. Even if you enlisted every
person in the world to help with the download, it would still take 81 days.

5. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
It’s mind-boggling to think that humans are creating so much data. Or is it? Think of how
much data you’re generating in an average day. Every interaction with your computer or
phone creates data. Every interaction on social media creates data. Every time you walk down
the street with a phone in your pocket, it’s tracking your location through GPS sensors – more
data. Every time you buy something with your contactless debit card? Data. Every time you
read an article online? Data. Every time you stream a song, movie or podcast? Data, data,
data.
As an example, let’s look at social media usage in 2018. In just one minute:
• Twitter users sent 473,400 tweets
• Snapchat users shared 2 million photos
• Instagram users posted 49,380 pictures
• LinkedIn gained 120 new users
In short, all of the world’s data is the result of our increasingly digitised way of life. The
connectivity of modern smart devices – not just smart phones, but smart TVs, smart
thermostats and so on – also plays a huge role. These devices are constantly gathering and
transmitting data.
Where is all this data coming from?

6. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Other mind-blowing data stats include:
• Google processes more than 40,000 searches every second, or 3.5 billion searches a
day.
• 1.5 billion people are active on Facebook every day. That’s one-fifth of the world’s
population.
• Two-thirds of the world’s population now own a mobile phone.
When you look at stats like these, it’s not hard to see how the world’s data has exploded in
recent years and will continue to grow at an incredible rate. Whether we’ll hit that vast
number of 175 zettabytes in 2025 remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: we’ll be
generating a heck of a lot more data than we already are.
Where is all this data coming from?

7. © 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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