“Today computers -- and, therefore, the Internet -- are almost
wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of
the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data
available on the Internet were first captured and created by
human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital
picture or scanning a bar code.The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy -
- all of which means they are not very good at capturing data
about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew
everything there was to know about things -- using data they
gathered without any help from us -- we would be able to track
and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We
would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling
and whether they were fresh or past their best.”