In 2022, Barrett Lyon of The Opte Project made a visualization of the internet as a continuation of his project to show its growth over the years.
This is what it looks like.
Each tiny dot represents a webserver, each line represents a connection.
Each of those dots are grouped up into networks. A network of networks.
In 2020, it was reported that the amount of data on the internet reached 64 zetabytes.
A zetabyte is equivalent to one trillion gigabytes.
For reference, the human brain is estimated to be able to hold the equivalent of merely 2.5 million gigabytes.
A collection of millenias' worth of human knowledge that were significant enough (or lucky enough) to be preserved.
Realize that all of this, represented in a single 10000x8000 photo, are simply at our fingertips. Waiting to be accessed.
But we as individuals will never be able to grasp all of it. Not in our lifetime. Not even in tens, hundreds, or thousands.
25,600,000 lifetimes, maybe. But not for long, as the amorphous mass that we call The Web continues to grow.
But we as human beings love to consume.
And so we continue consuming.
