According to a new study published by respected analysis firm IDG shows that the digital information grows at a rate that will soon outpace the rate at which storage devices evolve.

For 2006, IDC listed more than 400 million digital cameras, 600 million cellphones with video capabilities, 550 million digital music players and more than 900 million computers. Add to that the 1.6 billion subscribers to a mobile telephony service and the 70 million plasma TVs sold worldwide and you might get the picture of what awaits us 5 years from now.

By 2010 the amount of home appliances will increase by 50% compared to what is now, while the overall price will drop and the resolution of digital camcorders and digital cameras will sharply increase. As a result, the amount of digital information ready to be stored will grow to a level that will surpass the capacity of physical storage devices, with IDC researchers estimating that 2007 will be the first year when this will occur.

The digital future is dominated by extremes and paradoxes. For example, YouTube is now the host of many millions of short home-made videos and boasts with more than 100 million views per day- and the company didn’t even exist two years ago. Experts are also saying that more than 1 billion MP3s are being downloaded every day on the Internet, while Chevron officials claim they gather 2 terabytes per day (17.592.000.000.000 bytes).        
All TV stations will broadcast through digital signals by the end of 2017 and overall, the amount of digital information will grow 6 times by 2010.   

However, the paradox is that although we are still able today to read ancient inscriptions from Greece or even Mesopotamia, we have difficulties reading content from VHS video-tapes from the ’80 or from audio cassettes from the ’70.