According to this “article”:http://privacy.cs.cmu.edu/people/sweeney/explosion2.pdf by Latanya Sweeney, one million hard disks with a total storage space of 90 terabytes were sold in 1983. My computer alone, purchased in late 2006, has one terabyte of storage space mounted in 2 RAID drives (I use them to back each other up). If my understanding that storage technology has yet to hit a brick wall is correct, it seems likely that a not-especially rich US consumer will have as much information storage capacity available to her as was available to the entire world in the early 1980s a few years down the line, if she wants it. (Sweeney’s article is really about the broader privacy issues that arise because of this expansion in the ability to store, and indeed to gather, personal information, but this figure hit me between the eyes when I read it).
Sunday morning, 7.05 AM. Most people are still asleep. I am playing with my son and listening to the radio, and it is the first time this week that I hear some substantial radio coverage of the “2007 World Social Forum”:http://wsf2007.org/. I had no time this week to watch the evening television news more than once or twice, and hence do not know whether the Dutch television paid more attention. But I did read the newspaper, and listened to the radio, and heard almost nothing about the WSF.
So no attention to the WSF on primetime. Perhaps it’s just my impression? Or perhaps it’s just the Netherlands? (Not that there is important local news here – the government formation is happening behind closed doors, with no gossip spreading to the People). I hope I am wrong, since the WSF offers a good opportunity for the mainstream press to report on structural issues of global injustice and poverty, instead of only reporting on natural disasters, flaming wars, and other cases of instant misery.