Trend: Managing Multiple Media Information, Article 5/6
Searching for a Needle of Knowledge in an Information Haystack
AUTHOR STEVE BANNISTER
Article 5 in a Series of 6
In the January 2007 issue, Steve Bannister provided an overview of five key trends that will affect people and businesses in the year ahead. These trends were: Global Greening, The Flow of Philanthropy, Connecting the World, Information vs. Knowledge, and The Power of Design.
In this issue, Steve gives great tips on how to manage new technologies existing in cyberspace.
We are drowning in information. Traditionally, the culprits have always been television, radio and print media. More recently, we have been wrestling the Internet (blogs, social networking, instant messaging etc.), email, PDAs and cell phones. There does not seem to be anywhere left to hide.
Just how bad is it? A recent article in USA Today discussed how John Gantz, a researcher at IDC (world’s leading technology media, research, and events company) took on the arduous task of determining approximately how much digital information was generated in 2006. He counted such sources as e-mail, spreadsheets, and other data collected by corporate computers as well as digital photos from personal cameras, security cameras and cell phones. Gantz ultimately estimated that 161 exabytes of data were generated! It’s interesting to note that there were approximately 2 exabytes of information produced in 1999. As this exponential trend continues, we will find ourselves under pressure to discover better ways to store and interpret data.
