We are our data, our data are us

Energy burden: We need to find sustainability with our information because our dataome won’t stop growing, but that growth can negatively affect the ecosystems that humans rely on. – 123rf

BY one count, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of digitised information are generated on Earth every day. That’s more data than all the words spoken by all the humans who ever existed, using generous estimates for both. Texts, emails, pet videos, influencer TikToks, financial transactions and data about data itself all inundate the world in a seemingly never-ending flood.

As much as this glistening informational ocean supports and amplifies our abilities as a species, it also burdens us. The energy and resource demands of data storage and computation are enormous, and despite ever-improving efficiencies and innovations, the sheer growth of data seems to continually outpace us: