I was thinking about this just the other day: How many things would I tote around every day if I had a physical copy of every CD, book, etc with me instead of the digital copy I carry around on my iPod, PowerBook and mobile phone. Apparently someone did a study in Britain:
Gadget lovers are so hungry for digital data many are carrying the equivalent of 10 trucks full of paper in “weight”.
Music, images, e-mails, and texts are being hoarded on mobiles, cameras laptops and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), a Toshiba study found.
It found that more than 60% kept 1,000 to 2,000 music files on their devices, making the UK “digitally fat”.
“Virtual weight” measurements are based on research by California Institute of Technology professor Roy Williams.
He calculated physical comparisons for digital data in the mid-1990s.
He worked out that one gigabyte (1,073,741,824 bytes) was the equivalent of a pick-up truck filled with paper.
BBC
As an example: Including audio books, podcasts as well as music, I currently have two months worth of audio content on my iPod. That’s not even including the first 8 episodes of Battlestar Galactica that’s residing on the HD part of it and the 3720 photos I can display on it.
I do not like the term “obesity” though. That would imply it’s something unhealthy. I love having all this choice with me at all times though. If I want to listen to the Beatles, I have all their albums with me at all times.
If I felt like I had to listen to everything it would be a burden. But since I find it refreshing to have the ability of switching from John Lennon to Trent Reznor with three flicks of my hand I find it gives me freedom rather than trying me down.
