atw: Article: Writers needed more than ever

A colleague sent me a link to an interesting short article about the volume
of information that people produce worldwide. Among other juicy statistics,
it says:

"Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes
of new information in 2002..."
 
"5 exabytes ...is the equivalent of all the words ever spoken by human
beings."

To me, the bottom line is that this is good news for technical writers. It's
a reminder of how much information is out there waiting to be tamed. And the
trend is an increasing amount of information each year. 

The real challenge is to cut the crap from the information, and present the
remainder succinctly and meaningfully. In other words, in the longer term,
the essential skills of professional writers will be needed more than ever
before. 

The article is at:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/datbus/article.php/3102011

The report on which the article is based is at:
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/
<http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/> 

Regards,
Craig

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