The Declining Price of Digital Storage

We all know the phrase “Big Data.”  But when I received a tweet yesterday advising that I could buy a 3 terrabyte external hard drive for approximately $99, it just cemented what has come to be an obvious realization: computer storage is cheap.  So, thanks to Jonah Lupton, I saw that the pricing of storage over the past 30 years shows an amazing price cliff, as follows:

Price of 1 GB of storage over past 30 years:

1981–$300,00                                                                                                   1987–$50,000;                                                                                              1990-$10,000;                                                                                               1994-$1,000;                                                                                            1997–$100;                                                                                                       2000-$10;                                                                                                   2004- $1; and                                                                               2012- $0.10