A number of interesting new articles and forums deal with our exaflood theme of the past few years.
“Striving to Map the Shape-Shifting Net” – by John Markoff – The New York Times – March 2, 2010
“Data, data, everywhere” – The Economist – Special Report on Managing Information – February 25, 2010
“Managing the Exaflood” – American Association for the Advancement of Science – February 19, 2010
“Professors Find Ways to Keep Heads Above ‘Exaflood’ of Data” – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education – February 24, 2010

The Internet has two billion global users, and the developing world is just hitting its growth phase. Mobile data traffic is doubling every year, and soon all four billion mobile phones will access the Net. In 2008, according to a new UC-San Diego study, Americans consumed over 3,600 exabytes of information, or an average of 34 gigabytes per person per day. Microsoft researchers argue in a new book, “The Fourth Paradigm,” that an “exaflood” of real-world and experimental data is changing the very nature of science itself. We need completely new strategies, they write, to “capture, curate, and analyze” these unimaginably large waves of information.

Wyoming wireless operator Brett Glass has 20 questions for the FCC on Net Neutrality.

With 16.5% of the nation “underemployed” and economists gloomily doubting next-generation job creation, Washington is considering a number of strategies, including the President’s “jobs bill.” “Jobs,” President Obama insisted in his state of the union address, “must be our number one focus in 2010.”
But as Washington concentrates on employment, it also is considering a possibly job-killing set of new regulations on the communications sector. Known as “Net Neutrality,” these proposed new rules could, in their extreme form, prohibit many technologies and business plans used today on the Internet, not to …

The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog asks, “Could Verizon Handle Apple Tablet Traffic?”
The tablet’s little brother, the iPhone, has already shown how an explosion in data usage can overload a network, in this case AT&T’s. And the iPhone is hardly the kind of data guzzler the tablet is widely expected to be. After all, it’s one thing to squint at movies on a 3.5-inch screen and quite another to watch them in relatively cinematic 10 inches.
“Clearly this is an issue that needs to be fixed,” says Broadpoint Amtech analyst Brian …

Just two more New York Times articles that point out what’s obvious around here: the Internet’s dramatic and unpredictable disruption of the whole “media” space. Isn’t Washington’s assumption that it can sort all this out and impose particular business models on the media space through prescriptive Net Neutrality regulation, a case of supreme hubris?
“What if Conan said, ‘Bye, NBC. Hello, Internet.”?
“Xbox Takes on Cable, Streaming TV Shows, and Movies.”

Amazon’s Paul Misener gets all reasonable in his comments on the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules:
With this win-win-win goal in mind, and consistent with the principle of maintaining an open Internet, Amazon respectfully suggests that the FCC’s proposed rules be extended to allow broadband Internet access service providers to favor some content so long as no harm is done to other content.
Importantly, we note that the Internet has long been interconnected with private networks and edge caches that enhance the performance of some Internet content in comparison with other Internet …

Collective vs. Creative: The Yin and Yang of Innovation
Later this week the FCC will accept the first round of comments in its “Open Internet” rule making, commonly known as Net Neutrality. Never mind that the Internet is already open and it was never strictly neutral. Openness and neutrality are two appealing buzzwords that serve as the basis for potentially far reaching new regulation of our most dynamic economic and cultural sector – the Internet.
I’ll comment on Net Neutrality from several angles over the coming days. But a terrific essay by …

See this fun and quite insightful discussion of the digital 2000’s (and beyond) with Esther Dyson, Jaron Lanier, and Paul Saffo (hat tip: Adam Thierer).

Oliver Chiang serves up a bunch of good metrics on the digital decade that was. Here are a few:
– Number of e-mails sent per day in 2000: 12 billion
– Number of e-mails sent per day in 2009: 247 billion
– Revenues from mobile data services in the first half of 2000: $105 million
– Revenues from mobile data services in the first half of 2009: $19.5 billion
– Number of text messages sent in the U.S. per day in June 2000: 400,000
– Number of text messages sent in the U.S. per day in June …