by Sara Chodosh / infographic by Pete SucheskiENCARTA
1,600 MB
Microsoft’s brush
with CD-ROM
encyclopedias
lasted from 1993
to 2009, but ironic
cyber-hipsters can
still buy the full set
of compact discs
on eBay.THE INTERNET (IN 2014)1 , 000 , 000 , 000 , 000 , 000 ,000 MB
We can only estimate the Web’s total size, and it’s growing too fast to keep up. But some experts think it’s zipping along at about 1.1 zettabytes
(1,100,000,000,000,000 MB) per year. A 2015 study estimated it would take two per cent of the Amazon rainforest to print out the whole thing.ORIGINAL
ENCYCLOPEDIA
BRITANNICA
3.59 MB
The irst edition,
published in 1768,
comprised just
three volumes,
released in weekly
instalments. It
included such
scintillating
six-word articles
as “Woman: the
female of man,
see homo.”WIKIPEDIA (ENGLISH)
27,000 MB
The internet’s proverbial
monkeys have tapped out more
than 5.5 million articles in QE2’s
native tongue alone, showing no
signs of stopping.NATURAL
HISTORY
3.06 MB
Over 37 volumes,
Pliny chronicled
the natural world,
including quite a
few fundamental
misunderstand-
ings. Did you know
that fennel root
somehow helps
snakes shed their
skin? It doesn’t.
Sorry, Pliny.CANON OF
MEDICINE- 5 M B
Persian Polymath
Avicenna’s
compendium
served as the
deinitive medical
textbook from its
publication in 1025
all the way through
the beginning of
the 18th century.
CHARTED
NO ONE CAN KNOW
everything all the
time—but we humans
sure like to pretend
we do. So it’s no
wonder our species
has a long-standing
tendency to compile
information. What
started with some old
dudes writing down
their own observations
morphed through the
years into compendia,
libraries, and now vast
repositories of digitally
gathered knowledge.
Here’s how much
space our worldly
understanding took
up, in bits and bytes, as
we chewed off bigger
and bigger chunks.
KNOW-IT-ALLHow Big Is
Humanity’s
Knowledge?
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