Unlikely to fill Gmail account before I die

i've just done some quick maths.

In two years of using gmail, i've ended up with 212 mb.

If my email usage remains constant (just say) and I live another fifty years, i can expect to have about 5.512 gigs of data in my gmail account when i die, fat and happy, aged sixty-five ;-).

Gmail have been steadily growing the size of my gmail account. It started at 1 gig capacity, soon doubled to 2 gig, and now it's crept up to 2.773 gig.

I don't have to do the math to know that within 50 years it will have doubled again.

So at my current email consumption rate, i won't run out before death sets in.

Consider though that the amount of data we send around will probably grow in a non-linear fashion. If we assume that gmail's capacity will grow in an equivalent way then i won't run out in my lifetime.

Then again, a more likely possibility is that the cost of transmitting data falls in a different way to the cost of storing data, and then we'd end up in a situation where, for example, it's cheap to email a thousand movies to your friend, but not so cheap to store those thousand movies at the other end. Or vice versa.

Ah who can tell. One things for sure. I'll be leaving behind a lot of data when i die. terrabytes of crap. terracrap.

What will happen to all that terracrap? does someone just kill your account? is it eaten by the ether? do your descendents have to comb through your terracrap, slowly piecing together your life, following the thread of threatening emails you sent to your insurance company and so on?

What about all the beta's i've signed up for? Who will know all the passwords when i die? Must get them put into my will.

Enough melancholy thoughts for a Friday. Happy Code is good code.

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