Bill Reith says " the correct unit of measure is not ‘yottabytes’ but ‘awholelottabytes’". He also pointed out that a key issue is how to retrieve all the data. In particular he says that often he finds himself saying "I know I have an email…or a document… on that subject around here somewhere. Where the heck did I put it?". Part of the answer is meta data. I envision that increasingly software that is used to save emails, pictures, music, etc. will make it much easier to add tags of our choosing. Some software will undoubtedly figure out what the tags should be and create them for us. Another part of the answer is better tools for finding things. My favorite is X1. X1 indexes your email while you are sleeping and it can then sift through tens of thousands of emails and find what you are looking for as fast as you can type in the search box. It is one of the most amazing pieces of software I have ever used.

• Yottabytes