Think of all the things we do on the Internet. We post pictures of ourselves, our friends, our dogs, our friends dogs, what we had for lunch, and that field trip in sixth grade. We post videos, watch videos, talk about videos we watched. We send and receive countless messages in countless forms. When you add it all up there is a staggering amount of information exchanged on the Internet every day. Then, as if things weren’t already complicated, start adding up days past and all the information exchanged then. It’s tiring just thinking about it! The Internet really is all about information exchange. Another name for that information is data. The word data really means individual pieces of information. When we quantify the amount of information on the Internet, we actually quantify the amount of data.
