Information boom keeps pace with new technology

People around the globe created enough new information in 2002 to fill the U.S. Libraries of… People around the globe created enough new information in 2002 to fill the U.S. Libraries of Congress 500,000 times.

Considering the Population Reference Bureau’s world population estimate of 6.3 billion people, that works out to the equivalent of a 30-foot tall pile of books per person.

The information was released in a recently published study conducted by faculty and students from the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California-Berkeley. The Berkeley study received financing from digital information dealers like Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.

When compared with the results of a 2000 study by the same group, which used data from 1999, stored information created during the past three years has increased by 30 percent.

The United States is the biggest producer of data, creating, since 1999, about 40 percent of the world’s new stored information, 33 percent of its new printed data and 30 percent of its new films, according to the study.

The evolution of technologies to capture, transmit, and store information, however, has grown just as rapidly.

The 2003 study classified new information into four main forms: print, film, magnetic and optical. These forms of information flow through four common transmitters: telephone, television, Internet and radio.

But aside from potentially filling many libraries, the changing ways of creating and transmitting information have affected almost everyone in the communication industry, as well as the general public.

Pitt’s student-run radio station, WPTS 92.3, has been changing the way it brings music and programming to its listeners. Station promotions, identification spots and interviews that went out over the air used to be recorded in a recording booth. They were then transferred to analogue carts, which are similar to cassettes, and plugged into machines for airplay.

Recently, the station switched to a digital format. Instead of carts, which take up physical recording space and are difficult to edit, recorded messages now go from the recording booth to a server on a computer, where they can be stored and edited, and then sent directly to a digital delay machine for airplay.

“Digital is faster, cheaper and more versatile,” said station general manager Tim Rensland, who added that the station’s server capacity will soon be doubled from 40 gigabytes to 80 to keep up with space demands.

WPTS is also preparing to re-launch radio Web casting, in which people can access a Web site and listen to streaming radio station programming from their computers, after a 2-year hiatus caused by legal issues. Legal challenges have impeded the growth of online radio stations, including Pitt’s own. Study researchers once thought such stations were poised for massive expansion in 2000.

“Web casting lets us reach a much wider audience of people in a non-traditional way,” said WPTS Assistant Chief Engineer Rob Hart. “That attracts underwriters for our programming by actually showing them all the listeners we’re getting.”

Photography is another area in which digital technology has evolved and gained popularity, according to study researchers. The study found that digital cameras are rapidly gaining dominance over film-based photography worldwide. Digital camera prints can be saved and printed on a PC, so digital camera users don’t have to worry about wasting rolls of film and money printing poor photographs.

Anthony Acernese, a senior neuroscience major at Pitt, said he decided to spend about $350 on a 4.1-megapixel camera with a 1,000-photo storage capacity, rather than buy a cheaper film camera.

“I was tired of the hassle of having to go down, pick up and pay for film,” Acernese said. “I didn’t want to waste money on bad pictures.”

The use of digital video, DV, for recording moving images has also risen in popularity during recent years, according to the study.

Pitt’s student-run television station, UPTV, has always filmed all programming using DV format, according to station director Sam Cotler. The station launched two years ago as Creation Station.

“The financial constraints of DV are relatively inexpensive, compared to what network TV uses,” Cotler said. “Some shows on TV, like news programming, use the same thing.”

After filming, footage is transferred to computer hard drives and edited there with programs like Final Cut Pro. Footage is then sent to another computer, where it is changed to an MP2 format. Once converted, the footage is sent to a remote server in a campus building, where the program is transmitted to campus cable.

DV tapes record data in the computer language of ones and zeros, rather than the analog technique of audio and video. UPTV stores past programming on such tapes, but the staff is considering a switch to DVD disks or higher quality DV tape that won’t wear out after repeated use.

Although amateur use of DV has become more common recently, the study found that the movement toward DV in commercial moviemaking has been slower than with photography, because many movies made for mass consumption were found to have a “quality expectation” that still favors film aesthetically.

The costs of editing DV, however, were found to be exponentially lower than costs for film, leading researchers to expect digital to gain market share as its visual quality improves.

When it comes to storing new information, the Berkeley study found that, worldwide, 92 percent of new information is put into magnetic media, such as hard disk drives, 7 percent in film form, and .01 percent on paper.

But the entertainment and news media are not the only areas to make use of new digital technology.

“Hospitals ‘ Health Networks,” the journal of the American Hospital Association, named UPMC one of the 100 Most Wired hospitals and health systems in the United States for the fifth year in a row.

Two years ago, UPMC introduced “Smart Cards” to its patients. These small plastic cards each have an embedded microchip capable of instantly accessing a patient’s vital health and insurance information from the central UPMC database, when the cards are scanned at places like a doctor’s office.

According to UPMC, the card also cuts the time for scheduling appointments, registering for clinical services, keeping track of insurance eligibility and paying bills.

According to the study, some other media types that have emerged as popular digital storage options in recent years include audio MiniDiscs and flash memory, while hard-disk drives are being put to new uses in products like video recorders and video game consoles.