Exponential Growth of Data
“Data really powers everything that we do.” — Jeff Weiner
Summary: This article discusses the exponential growth of data, how it is being used, and the reasons behind its growth. The growth of data in recent years has been impressive, with the amount of data generated continuing to grow exponentially. The internet and the rapid growth of internet users over the years is one reason for this, as are the data created by large enterprises, tech companies, ecommerce platforms, health and scientific industries, governmental and non-governmental organizations. The tech giants, including Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, are major contributors to the growth of data. Machine learning is also contributing to the growth of data by creating digital profiles of our habitual patterns.
As a continuation from Data — The New Mineral, data is immensely valuable for economic reasons. Data is everywhere but it gains value even as a currency once its recorded, managed, and accessible (Just like Bitcoin). In this article, we explore data growth, some big players, and how data is currently being used. I’m sure you’re wondering; what exactly is data growth and why should I care? Data growth simply (yet powerful) is the growth of data in a continuous and persistent way. This is important because there is a need to efficiently manage data, the same way we preserved important books of the past as a record of our history. Information is past on from generation to generation via different forms of mediums. How that information is managed is critical to how its past on. Now we live in a digital world where data is a collection of information in its basic forms (movies, books, audio, etc.). We have been using data to interpret our lives since the early centuries. But one of the main differences is that it wasn’t seen through the same lens of today. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, was quoted stating “the only thing constant is change”. The evolution of data in terms of volume, velocity and variety has been impressive in recent years. The growth of data in the past couple of years has been exponential. The evolution of technology and its dominating impact in every aspect of life, is generating a vast amount of data at an incalculable pace. 2018 studies showed that the 90% of the world’s data being used was created within the last two years alone [1]. Other studies have shown we’ve been able to generate about 2.5 quintillion bytes data being each day [2]. To put things into perspective, if each person had a 500-gigabyte iPhone, it’s the equivalent of half a billion iPhones filled to maximum capacity each day. In accordance with the chart above, it is estimated that the data is growing at a rate of 60% to 70% annually [3]. That is, the amount of data generated continues to grow exponentially.
If the data available in the beginning of 21st century is the size of a cherry, then now it’s a big cherry field. Its magnificent to imagine how the printing press increased the amount of data leading up to the digital age, and now we’re going beyond with 44 zettabytes in 2020 [9]. There haven’t been any downshift in terms of data volume.
So, why is data suddenly growing exponentially? There are many reasons behind it. The internet and the rapid growth of internet users over the years is one of them. And we’re not only using it casually, but in all spectrums of our lives. From banking to shopping, entertainment to connecting with people and engaging through social media, sensors to device tracing and so on. These activities generate gigantic amount of data knowingly or unknowingly. Then comes the data created by large enterprises, tech companies, ecommerce platforms, health and scientific industries, governmental and non-governmental organizations. Tech companies with billions of connected devices and services all over the world contribute a massive amount of data. Thus emerged the importance of effective technology for data life cycle management through data manipulation. The scope of exploiting data from a business standpoint also acts as a multiplier to data growth. It’s one thing to have the data but it’s another thing to use it. Modern businesses are utilizing data to account for their inventory, manage their customers, and grow their profit margins.
Irrespective of the domain, every industry is contributing to data growth. But when it comes to the most superior companies that play a big role in the growth of data, it has been the tech giants. It can be acknowledged that Meta, Amazon, and Google, Microsoft are the big tech players in the data realm. Other than these companies, streaming services like Apple iTunes, Spotify, or Netflix, along with other financial services, contribute and generate vast volumes of data every day.
Amazon, the American multinational tech company is referred as one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world. Their business and services are largely focused on e-commerce, cloud computing/storage, digital streaming and artificial intelligence (AI). Each month almost 200 million people around the world get on Amazon devices/sites [5]. My intuition says it’s much more than 200 million, mostly worsened by the Covid Pandemic. Amazon collects data from users as we navigate their site (everyone’s data is collected, including bots monitoring bots), such as the time spent on browsing each page, each click, and each search. Have you ever been on your Amazon account, and you were shown new products based on your shopping history, your search history, and what others who bought the same items are likely buying? More data is enabled to manage current data (it’s never enough). Machine learning is also contributing to the growth of data by creating digital profiles of our habitual patterns. And its dynamic enough to know when we change our habits or if we’re in a different geographic location. And these engagements result in large amounts of data being tracked and recorded.
Then comes another tech giant, the ‘place for almost every answer’, Google. The service of Google includes search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. Initially, Google’s ultimate mission was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google makes it easy to discover a broad range of information from a variety of sources. That’s a whole lot of data itself. And its contribution is increasing every day. Google has over 1 billion users worldwide for its products and services [6]. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2022, there are approximately 8.5 billion searches per day. That’s more than the amount on humans on earth (approximately 8 Billion). Google is processing about 40k queries every second (that’s wild!). As of July 2022, Google holds an 83% market share in search engines, with others like Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu taking the remaining populations [3].
The social networking giant, Meta is another major contributor of data. As the company owns most of the technologies that helps people to connect, find communities and grow their businesses. Around 36.8% of the world’s population engages with Meta’s technology on a monthly basis. Ask yourself, do you know anyone not on Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp. That’s almost 3 billion users on Facebook[8] and a growing number when we include their other social platforms. Over 1 billion WhatsApp groups exist worldwide [2]. As of 2020, Meta was generating 4 petabytes of data every day; that’s a million gigabytes. People are spending more time on social media (40–60 minutes/day), which translates to more activity data being generated and stored.
So why should you care about the data growth? Because we’re continually figuring out how it should be managed. Our society has gone from managing data on books, now its being written digitally at quantum speeds. In the coming years, it will be more than just the vast volumes of data, it will be about the manipulation of data to effectively manage human behavior. When the trend of data growth is explored, it is evident that the growth is exponential, and it will continue to move in that direction. And with the advancement in the field of data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and IoT, the need for exploring the fast and actionable data is going to be a major frame of reference for the overall evolution of humankind. Data will continue to be exploited to unearth new patterns. As of now, around 1.7 megabytes of data is generated by each person in just a second [2]. We’re digitizing everything that used to be in physically owned paper books. One must ponder, who does the data belong to? is it the generator, or the host of the data, or both? I imagine a future, in which people will start to get paid for their data as an economic expansion. What is the meaning of data without the people that generate it? Imagine having an app where you could choose how you want your data to be used? More to come on economic means of empowerment using data [https://blackwealthdata.org/].
REFERENCE
[1] qlik.com; [2] medium.com/@srank2000; [3] statista.com; [5] bigcommerce.com; [7] forbes.com; [8] hootsuite.com; [9] How Much Data Is Created Every Day?
