how many terabytes would it take to accomodate every work of literature ever?

Question

(just an estimate would be fine)

Answer 1

All depends on how generalized your question is: if it contains every NOTEABLE piece of literature, then probably not a lot. You have to understand that even if you're working with Microsoft Word a text document is really only a few kb.

Now if you're talking about every single piece of literation in the world...... We're not talking terabytes here.... We're talking about a LOT more.

Seeing as the human being is very creative, a lot of people have written things from diaries to screenplays to reviews. Not to mention what has appeared in text on the internet and IMs(yes, I count IMs and PMs too).Then we;re also talking about school books and that and the sort.

If you want to get down to the nitty gritty, even cave paintings can count along these lines, as they try to tell a story. Like that one cave painting of a buffalo and all the humans surrounding it(describing the affinity for one particular buffalo, and then the process it took to kill it). And even upon that, the scriptures that were written upon each subject you're talking about, like those hating or loving Shakespear.

My opinion on it though? Don't limit yourself to a little amount of harddrive space just to measure the possibilities books can give you. Besides, owning the books themselves would be a very impressive feat. Imagine the question being "how many square feet(or yards or miles, whichever) would it take a library to house every single publication in the world". Now that would get some interesting answers.

Note only that, writing has been around forever. I would much prefer the hard copy of the material instead of a soft copy. Not only for the novelty of the book but for the satisfaction of knowing a power outtage can't keep you from reading it. Or battery life.

I think the question is too open-ended of a varying answer to ever make it specific. The list can also be ever-growing with how many books people want to put out these days. Publishers are literally back-logging writers because they are still printing what people hired them to before. And who knows if those books are even worth reading or not?

Eitehr way, that's good you are thinking out of the box, but what would make me feel better is to know that you intended to read all that you collect.

Bob

Answer 2

According to a factoid I read recently it would take two petabytes to store the entire contents of all US academic libraries. 1048576 terabytes = 1 Petabyte. So for every work of literature....I'd say it'll take ALOT of terabytes. Heck, it might even take an exabyte. Lol.

Answer 3

I don't know how many terabytes it would take, but, according to the animated series, "Futurama", in the year 3000, all fiction and non-fiction will each fit on a CD/DVD-like disc! Of course, they don't mention how much the discs will weigh, though! ;)