::fibreculture:: stats?

[Sean Cubitt]

http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/



World Total 	605.60 million
Africa 	6.31 million
Asia/Pacific 	187.24 million
Europe 	190.91 million
Middle East 	5.12 million
Canada & USA 	182.67 million
Latin America 	33.35 million

a bit slow off the mark but NUA ("founded in 1996. Nua Internet 
Surveys was acquired in June 2001 by the Scope Communications Group, 
Ireland's leading IT Media Company") are pretty reliable


On a broader basis, well worth checking out
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/

extract from the summary:  The world produces between 1 and 2 
exabytes of unique information per year, which is roughly 250 
megabytes for every man, woman, and child on earth. An exabyte is a 
billion gigabytes, or 1018 bytes. Printed documents of all kinds 
comprise only .03% of the total. Magnetic storage is by far the 
largest medium for storing information and is the most rapidly 
growing, with shipped hard drive capacity doubling every year. 
Magnetic storage is rapidly becoming the universal medium for 
information storage.

s


-- 
Sean Cubitt * Screen and Media Studies * University of Waikato * 
Private Bag 3105 * Hamilton * New Zealand * seanc at waikato.ac.nz * T: 
+64 (0)7 838 4543 * F: +64 (0)7 838 4767

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film