A report by the University of California, San Diego, found the typical American consumes a staggering amount of information every day. The report, called “How much information?”, found:
In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video). Information at work is not included.
According to Nick Bilton of the New York Times, this doesn’t mean Americans read 100,000 words a day; it means that 100,000 words cross their eyes and ears in a single 24-hour period.
The report noted a growth in reading and interactive content:
Thanks to computers, a full third of words and more than half of bytes are now received interactively. Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet.
That volume is mind-boggling!
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My goodness. That’s the equivalent of 100.5 pictures. Mind-boggling indeed.
Information at work is not included? For those of us in the writing professions, that’s like saying that the calories we consume in the main course don’t count. Just the appetizer and dessert.
I was thinking the same thing, Larry. If the average American consumes 100,500 outside of work, what does that mean for professional writers? Are we looking at twice that or way, way more? Wow. Almost makes me feel guilty for pushing so many words on others for review. Almost.