People are Drowning in Information
- Charles Johnson
- Feb 3, 2016
- 2 min read
Your prospects are drowning in it. Word pictures are the only way to grasp how deep our information ocean is these days.
In 2012, our info-ocean contained 1.2 zettabytes of data. Equations show this monster growing into 35 zettabytes before the year 2020.
The normal response is - What on earth is a zettabyte? Good question! Let's start with the meaningless. A zettabyte is equivalent to a "1" with 21 zeros. That is a big number, but you can't feel it? It's too abstract - try this:
A 260,000 mile stack of iPhones is needed to hold 1 zettabite - this stack would go past the moon.
1 Zettabyte will support 36 million years of HD video.
1 Zettabyte is the volume of the Great Wall of China if you allow an 11oz cup of coffee represent one gigabyte of data.
This represents where we were in 2012. Where we are heading in just five years is 30x bigger.
Keep in mind what your prospect is dealing with today. Getting your message delivered while they are drowning in our big info-ocean takes more thought and strategy today. Delivering information to your prospects over the next few years will take even more.
Thankfully, we have inspiration. Today is not the first time humans faced an information explosion. Around 1453, Gutenberg invented the printing press. Thousands upon thousands of books flooded the market. Before there was the press, books were copied by hand. It took a year or more to produce one book.
As early as 1500, humanist scholars were already complaining about too much information.
One respected humanist, D. Erasmus, described it back then as Printers “fill the world with pamphlets and books that are foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive; and such is the flood that even things that might have done some good lose all their goodness.”
What did they do about this problem? They solved it with an evolution of note taking, reference books, and libraries. Created manageable ways to organize information. Their systems supported information growth until our current "information explosion" started in the 20th Century.
The irony is that the 16th Century complaints are the same complaints we make today? Our larger, faster-growing info-ocean is also filled with "stuff" we can't use and can't trust. We spend too much time swimming through this "stuff" to find the useful "stuff" that helps.
Do you think the 16th-century guys were wimps for complaining? Do you think they could handle what we have to sift through today? Be careful how you answer. Imagine what you will think about the present you when the year 2020 rolls in and our info-ocean holds enough coffee for 30 Great Walls of China.
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