The Data Deluge and Obliquity for Control [President´s Message]

The well-known Moore\´s law says that the transistor density on integrated circuits approximately doubles every two years. Another law that has been studied in recent years involves the amount of digital information created and transmitted worldwide. In 2006, this amount was slightly less than 200 Exabytes (1 EB is equal to $10^{18}$ bytes), about 300 EB in 2007, 500 EB in 2008, and more than 700 EB in 2009. It is estimated that in 2011 the amount will reach 1800 EB. Based on this historical trend, the amount of digital information globally created and transmitted has become an exponential function of time. Furthermore, the discrepancy between the information that is produced and the information that is stored is diverging exponentially.