Digital Spew Edges Into Zettabyte Zone

The flood of digital information produced by the world is outgrowing even the language described it. "Zettabyte"—one million million gigabytes, or enough information to fill 75 billion iPads—has now entered the lexicon, and the world's digital output is expected to pass the 1 zettabyte mark for the first time this year, the Telegraph reports. Last year's output was around 800,000 petabytes.

"There has been mammoth growth in the types of media that make up the digital universe," especially "a huge increase in video and digital photography," an IT exec tells the Guardian. Experts predict that the world's digital output will increase by a factor of 44 over the next decade, meaning that even "yottabyte"—the next word up from zettabyte—won't be enough to describe it.
(More zettabyte stories.)