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For those who don't want to bother with clicking that link: real growth is 50X, Schmidt's claims was 260,000X.



Just now bothered to look at your calculator thing, since I maintain the actual numbers involved are pointless details. However...

The there was a 50x growth between now and the single year of 2002. Schmidt's quote stated 260,000X growth between now and the average of all data created in the past 5000 years.

In order to create an actual comparison of Schmidt Rate vs Real Rate, you need a 'real' number for the amount of data from recorded history until 2002, something that nobody has volunteered. Nobody is debating that Schmidt's numbers were inaccurate, and the number he provides for this is almost certainly wrong, however we don't know by how much. Extrapolating out from data from the single year of 2002 is flawed; it is foolish to think that the growth rates of data in 2002CE and 2002BCE are the same without data to suggest so.

If we accept that there has been a constant rate of growth of data creation, then your conclusion is valid.




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