FORECAST: Gartner Says More than 1 Billion PCs In Use Worldwide and Headed to 2 Billion Units by 2014 Two billion PCs sounds a lot, but think about the billions of embedded chips, the consumer electronics and the mobile devices esp. the mobile phones.

FORECAST: IDC’s new whitepaper offers updated growth projections and new findings expected to impact business and society based on new data and analysis that indicate:

  • At 281 billion gigabytes (281 exabytes), the digital universe in 2007 was 10% bigger than originally estimated
  • With a compound annual growth rate of almost 60%, the digital universe is growing faster and is projected to be nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes) in 2011, a 10-fold increase over the next five years
  • Your “Digital Shadow” – that is, all the digital information generated about the average person on a daily basis – now surpasses the amount of digital information individuals actively create themselves
  • … eWaste … Electronic waste is accumulating at more than 1 billion units a year (emc.com)

Amazing data, not to mention the standard and new sources of spam and distraction, email, im, microblogging etc.

RELEVANCE: There is a physical ecological aspect of the exploding it universe – energy consumption of the billions of devices and mountains of electronic waste, mostly containing some toxic components.

There is a social / cultural / psychological ecological aspect too. The stream of data and growing speed and complexity.

It is time to think more seriously about this avalanche of technology and the resulting environmental and “psycho-ecological” effects. Ecology in IT is ment as a holistic term and means more than “greener chips”.

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