Digitally obese

KILKENNY -- Part of my Christmas shopping took me into a local computer shop where I purchased another 128 MB CF card. I have a notion that I need 128 MB of scratch space every day so I'm rounding up my pocket storage. As I began the process of backing up data for Monday, the BBC pointed to a study by Toshiba that claims "music, images, e-mails, and texts are being hoarded on mobiles, cameras, laptops and PDAs" all over the world. Virtual weight measurements are based on research by California Institute of Technology professor Roy Williams who calculated physical comparisons for digital data in the mid-1990s. Williams calculated one gigabyte (1,073,741,824 bytes) was the equivalent of a pick-up truck filled with paper.

This means many Britons carrying 10 trucks worth of data. I combed through my stuff for a quick tally from small to large:

• 16 MB on Sony Clie (docs)
• 32 MB phone memory (ringtones)
• 1 x 32 MB Memory Stick Duo (video and sound)
• 1 x 64 MB Memory Stick (images)
• 64 MB CF (docs and images)
• 3 x 128 MB CF cards (images)
• 1 x 128 USB key (docs and images)
• 4 GB stored on Sony MD-R (sound)

This means I am carrying at least four truckloads of stuff as I shuffle around town. No wonder I shuffle between snaps.

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BBC -- "Britons growing digitally obese"
Eammon Fitzgerald wonders if he is among the digitally obese.
According to technology analysts IDC, a fifth of all hard drives produced will be used in consumer electronics by 2007.
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