Cost of storing all human audio-visual experiences

So,

  How much does it cost to archive all human audio-visual experiences?
Everything anyone has ever heard or seen at good quality? Currently,

  Average global life expectancy    ~   68 years
  Approximate world population      ~    7 billion
  Typical DVD-quality SD bitrate    ~ 1.25 mbps
  Cheap 2 TB hard drive pre-floods  ~   50 EUR
  68 years * 1.25 mbps              ~  320 TB
  320 TB * (50 EUR / 2 TB)          ~   10 thousand USD
  10000 USD / 68 years in USD/month ~   12 USD per month
  12 USD per month * 7 billion      ~    1 trillion USD per year

Commercial pure storage plans seem to be around 100 EUR per TB per year
currently, which gives an upper bound of four times as much to account
for replacing failing hardware and all sorts of other things.

If storage prices continue to develop as they have since the 1980s, it
will be 0.1% of that, 1 to 4 billion USD per year, in a decade from now.
And 10% of that if you cut out sleeping times and settle for smartphone
video quality, $100 per life, if you can imagine that's what a 32 TB
medium will cost in 2023.

regards.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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Received on Friday, 19 July 2013 16:46:04 UTC