I first wrote about the exaflood in May. The quick definition of the exaflood from Wikipedia:
The word exabyte is the basis for the term “exaflood”, a neologism created by Bret Swanson of the Discovery Institute in a January 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial.[13] Exaflood refers to the rapidly increasing torrent of data transmitted over the Internet. The amount of information people upload, download and share on the Internet is growing (due in large part to video, audio and photo applications), at an exponential rate while the capacity of the Internet, its bandwidth, is limited and susceptible to a “flood” of data. “One exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD quality video.”
Last week Geoff Daily wrote a great article on the exaflood or “peta-plosion” that we’re already experiencing. Geoff outlines quite simply how the exaflood is being created (email, video, medical records for starters) and how that relates to the need for more bandwidth. Basically, the tons of info that’s being created is info that should be shared and the best way to share that should be a network. His post is definitely worth reading.
Since I’ve been in Ireland, I have experienced for the first time in years a great frustration in my lack on bandwidth. Downstream is good; upstream is bad. I think I’d run into the same issues at home. I can only upload about 1 minute of video at a time. Anything more than 1 minute and the connection will eventually time out. I just warned a friend about my issue as she is traveling soon and plans to post her videos online too.
So while I completely agree with Geoff; I add that I think the killer app, the bubble in the exaflood or the jam in the broadband will be video. It’s just too easy these days to create the video and the desire to share it is high – for vacations, to keep families communicating across the world, for training, for aspiring realty video stars…
We need to take a look what’s going on today and think about what we’re going to want and need to do online tomorrow.
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Totally agreed, Ann. Video in all its wondrous forms will undoubtedly be the primary driver of demand for bandwidth.
The point I was trying to make in the post you linked to was that even if you take all the cool new video applications off the table, we’re still seeing an exponential rise in the amount of data being sent over the Internet simply from the expansion of existing behaviors.
This is what really makes the case for me as to whether or not the exaflood is coming: we’re seeing the creation and transfer of data multiplying every day from every angle, even from more mundane applications like email and esoteric ones like research.
Great posts this past week. Keep up the terrific work!
It’s been a few years now since I worked in a traditional library – but even 10 years ago the book budget was dwarfed by the budget for online journal databases. You are right – it is amazing how much data is being created and stored online.
As you point up we’re going to be up a creek if all that info is online, the broadband pipes burst and suddenly we have no access to it – or no efficient access.
Thanks!!