The capacity of the human brain to understand data limits the generation of new data, says a paper from Claudius Gros, Gregor Kaczor, and Dimitrije Marković from Goethe University at arXiv. They collected millions of files from the Internet that corresponded to a storage volume of 284 to 675 terabytes, and studied how the file sizes were distributed. "Analyzing the file size distribution for several distinct data types we find indications that the neuropsychological capacity of the human brain to process and record information may constitute the dominant limiting factor for the overall growth of globally stored information, with real-world economic constraints having only a negligible influence," the authors write.
"In other words, global information cannot grow any faster than our ability to absorb or monitor it," The Physics arXiv Blog adds.