• by Joe Mandese , March 5, 2009

Hmmm, H-P CMO Michael Mendenhall isn’t the most electrifying presenter I’ve ever seen, but he’s making some mind-blowing points, and he’s really freaking me out with his view on the new “information economy,” and the implications it’s having on the world of media fragmentation.

“The amount of information in the world is predicted to double in the next five years,” Mendenhall, introducing this write to the word “exabyte” for the very first time. (And just when I was just getting used to terabytes).

By 2010, there will be a total of “988 exobytes” of digital information in the world, Mendenhall said. So what’s an exabyte? “It’s 18 million times the information of all the books ever written,” he explained. Or as wikipedia explains it, it’s the numeral 1 followed by 18 zeros, or a “quintillion memory units.” (Ow, my brain is hurting!).

“All of this information is useless if it cannot be acted upon, or get to the right person at the right time,” Mendenhall noted, adding, that the term “return on information” soon will become as important to the world â€" and to our industry especially â€" as the term “return on investment.”