ENDNOTE - MORE DATA, BUT NOT LESS PAPER - A study by the University
of California at Berkeley shows that during 2002, 5 billion gigabytes of data was
generated around the world. That amount, which is the equivalent of about 800
megabytes per person, is enough to fill 500,000 U.S. Libraries of Congress. The
university conducted a similar study in 1999, and the new results indicate a 30% rise
since the first study in the amount of stored information. The amount of data stored on
hard disk drives was up 114% from the earlier study. According to Peter Lyman, a
professor at UC Berkeley, those involved in the 1999 study expected that use of film
and paper would drop as users moved those media into electronic formats. Although
film-based photographs have dropped 9% since 1999, paper documents, including
books, journals, and others, have grown by as much as 43%. Lyman said that much
of the content is accessed on computers, but users print it out. Read more at: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=3713686 (Reuters, 29 Oct 03)