The NIST, National Institut of Standards and Technology, has organized a working group about the saving of the knowledge. The goal: define which numerical data the government, the industry and the universities had to save absolutely, and how.

At that time, nothing funny. Right. But we learn 2 things from the article:
1) they did not find an answer. Bravo, it was worthful.
2) they computed that the world produced enough numerical data to fill the Library Of Congress every 15 minutes!
All right, a working group to lay this kind of information, it sounds like a joke. But now, it's here and it deserves that we investigate...

The Library Of Congress, it's the building on the picture. It's located in Washington and is the National Library for United-States.
It's the most important in the world and actually gathers the three principal libraries of the country. Its collection includes:

• 29 million books
• 58 million manuscripts
• 21 million pictures
• 4,8 million plans and maps
• 2,7 million discs

That's what we would produce every 15 minutes!
E-mails, blogs, photos, videos, TV, etc.
Obviously, a very large part of that worths absolutely anything. It's even more scary. On the other hand, there are professional environments which really need a good long end solution for saving...

Source: GCN, two weeks ago.
For those who do not know: one of the 3 bibles printed by the first printer, Johannes Gutenberg, is in this library ! It was printed in 1455, and the price would be around 200,000 dollars...

Labels: anecdote

(permanent link) @ 2:20 PM