Mankind has stored 295 exabytes of information since 1986

According to the stats published by scientists at the University of Southern California people on the Earth have stored over 295 billion gigabytes (or 295 exabytes) of data since 1986.

The researchers have come to conclusion that 2002 should be taken as the start of the digital age inasmuch as it was the first year digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity worldwide.

The research work says that "if a single star is a bit of information, there's a galaxy of information for every person in the world. But it's still less than 1% of the information stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being."

The study tracked some 60 analog and digital technologies from 1986 to 2007, calculating the amount of data stored, communicated and computed. In 2007, 2.9 X 10^20 optimally compressed bytes were stored, almost X 10^21 bytes were communicated and 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second were run on general purpose computers.