How much does the Internet weigh? I already know!

3 200 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes. No, I didn't jam zero on the keyboard. This is similar to the Big Data value in the network. We have generated so much data since the beginning of the Internet. Most of them have been built over the last 3 years. If these more than 3 ZB (Zettabytes) of pure data were to weigh somehow, then it would come out that when the Internet stands on the scales the pointer shows almost 4 kg. Roughly as much as a laundry powder bag or a second-classer bag. And still in 2011, Google's Executive Director Eric Schmitt estimated the Network's weight at a fraction of 50 grams. This is how much it weighs when the strawberry is ripe. Why and from what extent has the Internet utilized it? And what is its true weight?

Weigh the electron.

How can I weigh the Internet at all? How is the Network's weighing methodology presented?

The key to the solution for many seems to be capturing the weight of all electrons, which are carriers of all the information in the Web and generate Internet traffic. The electron energy has a mass of approximately 10-3 kg. If, as Eric Schmitt argued a few years ago, we were to calculate the weight of all the electrons circulating in the Internet, we would have gone out a little over 50 grams. Since then, however, the Internet has used a lot of resources and today it weighs much more: almost 4 kg. However, this is only one method for calculating the weight of the Internet.

Another way is to weigh all the devices that allow the existence of a global Network. This means adding together the components that generate data traffic: computers and devices, cables, communication satellites and, ultimately, power stations themselves, from which the Internet draws its digital juices. It is probably not difficult to guess that nobody has done it yet. Anyway, it is doubtful that this will ever succeed. All calculations are outdated already when the first digits are summed up. tones of new electronic devices are being created every day. And we also generate tons of electro-waste every day.

Nevertheless, many scientists are still making this Sisyphonic effort. Russel Seitz, a physicist working at Harvard University and Microbubbles LLC's main operating brain, has recently calculated that the Internet sucks in energy from nearly 10 million servers, with a force equal to 50 million horsepower. Such a size already has some weight. The calculations made by Seitz show that the Internet weighs.... 2 ounces, that is some 56.5 grams. About as much as one egg or a small croissant.

But perhaps nobody has asked himself a question: how much Big Data actually weighs?

Digital Age.
The 20th century is sometimes referred to as the "age of wars". There is a strong likelihood that 21st century will become the' digital age'. Life, our life, our life, is digitised before our very eyes. We use as data: twittering on Twitter, posts on forums and Facebook, photos on the Instagram, search engine results, photo markings, favorite bookmarks, YouTube playlists... The Internet becomes a memorial book of our life. We are part of a digital library, such as Borges' poetry, whose shelves reach into the sky and there is no end to them. You still doubt that you are living in a data age?

Almost 3 years ago, in 1986, before the Internet became a civilisational asset for everyone (and when nobody heard of something like "Big Data" yet), only 6% of the material was digitised. Today, almost 99% of our entire culture and life is (also) digital. In the USA, on average, one in three children will already have their mini-profile online before they appear in the world. Information in the form of photos or videos with ultrasound was sent by his future parents, grandparents, uncles, gods, etc.

The extreme case of the digitization of life was described by the French philosopher of the new media and, at the same time, their fierce critic Paul Virilio. In the book "Information bomb". citing the example of June Houston, who, for fear of ghosts, installed cameras in every corner of her home. In this way, she wanted to ensure she had a feeling of psychological comfort that in an empty apartment she still had someone with her, that someone was present ("tele-presence", as Virilio writes), even in virtual way, on the other side of the cable, like an internet user. Jane streamed her life (normally "live") to the Internet. She did it at her own request. The Internet users acted as watch-ghosts, warning them of a potential threat from behind the worlds. From a moral perspective, the assessment of American behaviour can be extremely different. But we don't judge here. This is just a glaring example of the impact that the Network has on us all.

Huge Data

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and K. Cukier in the book "Big Data. A revolution that will change our thinking, work and life. Google already processes more than 24 Petabytes of data every day. Twitter from year to year increases its volume almost three times. Every second on YouTube, 800 million users add an hour of new videos. Nearly 10 million new photos are uploaded every hour on Facebook, and every day its users do nearly 3 billion different activities: from comments to sharing and clicking "like it". That is not the end.

The data desert grows at an astonishingly fast pace. Big Data grows by 4 years each year. Oracle's data is telling: by 2020 we will have generated over 45 Zettabytes of data in the Network - 44 times more than in 2009. IDC calculates that more than 5.2 GB of data per inhabitant of the earth will be generated per one inhabitant, and 33% of them will be of high value if they are meticulously wrapped up and analysed by researchers. The real challenges are therefore only ahead of us. The future is Huge Data.

Let's assume that it will take a quarter of a hour to read this text. During this time, the Internet will grow by some 2. billion data bits. The analogous equivalent of this number would be all the works that make up the canon of world literature. The collapse of the Internet as a world archive and database could perhaps mean a lethal blow to our culture. We would retreat from development by several decades, or perhaps we would not be able to live "normally" anymore. The digital apocalypse would turn out to be a real apocalypse.

Not counting kilograms

Anyone who wants to measure the Internet in physical terms with such a fierceness seems to be making the same cardinal mistake. Any weights with the number of grams or kilograms are simply not suitable for measuring the "Internet weight". We are trying to transfer water from the well using a sieve. Even though we would even engage all physical values to weight the net, I sincerely doubt that we will get a valuable picture of it. It seems that the "weight of the Internet". It is somewhere else. Outside the metric system.

Data that make up the Internet is not visible. We can bid and argue: are they weighing as much as a salt grain? Egg? Strawberry? Even if we agree to one of the options -. We are still not answering the basic question: what is their importance for our everyday life?

Big Data is a big problem for some people. or big brother, synonym of surveillance. I'm far from that. I see a big opportunity in Big Data. Anglo-Saxon journalist, Robert Krulwich, in his cult article "Let's weigh the Internet (or not), seems to be in such a position:" You can weigh the Internet up to you green on your face, but no games will tell you anything significant. The Internet connects people. What it is, it is meaningless. What counts is what it takes. Ideas are not like chairs or tables. They have their own physics. They create their own weight. Do you say that the Internet weighs about as much as strawberries? And what about it, since it can still stop the tanks.

However, the data is nothing without their analysis. We can look at the musical score all day long, but without a musical education we will not see anything in it except a series of silent notes and signs. We will not hear music. The same applies to data. Even if we had access to computers where all the world's data would be stored, without painstaking, analytical work, they would not have any greater value. It is true that the amount of data is important, but it is much more important to know what we can do with them. Can we convert Big Data into Smart Data? Is it -. How, in Krulwich's example, can we force endless numbers to stop world crises or at least improve our daily lives? Only then can we talk about the importance of the whole Internet. Even if the data weighed nothing, this "nothing" would mean more for us today than even the largest physical quantity.

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Photo from Pixabay.com/geralt, CC0 license

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