31.05.06 Questions about volume
So just how big is the internet? That is, how much physical space does it actually use? Having still not discovered the answer to the question ‘how many photons does it take to carry a byte?’ (plus the fact that photons have no mass and are pretty small) I’m quite far from being able to measure such a thing in any physical sense.
We can make many assumptions based upon what we know about the amount of data in the internet, but this is not a true physical volume - we can say that it is such-and-such amount of terabytes, but what does that really mean? How big is a byte, and how much space does it take to store it?
The physical size of storage devices also gives us little to go on. Computer memory systems get smaller all the time. Perhaps there will come a time when they can get no smaller - a point when all the data that can possibly be squeezed into a specific space will be reached? This would then dictate the size of computers and the amount of all data that it would be possible to store (or at least the size and/or number of computers that can hold vast, all-encompassing amounts of data). What if, in order to store all the possible data in the universe, the storage system had to be bigger than the universe?
Perhaps data could be more like a space removed from a vast finite block of blank matter. Instead of ‘adding to’ each time we store data we take away, and the complex shape of this space dictates the nature and content of the data? When all storage is consumed we are left with a massive empty space that is, paradoxically, full of information.
Sculpturally and architecturally this is an intriguing idea. A large space can be as impressive and affecting as a large, solid mass. Perhaps a space as large as the internet is as good a way of representing its volume as any? This space would be unfathomable to us. Like with the internet we would need a device to interpret the information it holds. We can use our senses to experience the scale of the space but we cannot detect minute fluctuations in pressure or temperature, or the invisible boundaries between data.
Rich @ 22:43 in
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