Ask the Oxford Dictionary for their 2022 ‘word of the year’ and you will see that “Goblin Mode” took top billing. Ask any business, and they will tell you their 2022 was defined by one crisis after the next. The Collins Dictionary took – perhaps unsurprisingly – a more macroeconomic stance and enshrined ‘permacrisis’ as their 2022 word of the year.
Research confirms that we are now not only operating in the greatest period of data generation in history, but also in a remarkably disrupted global economic landscape. A continuation of IDC research, completed by Statista, showcased a huge increase to the volume of data created by 2025 – growing to 180 zettabytes each year. For context, to store just one zettabyte of data would require 41.5 million of the world’s largest commercially available hard drives (24TB). This research noted that just two percent of the data that was produced and consumed in 2020 was saved – and retained – into the next year.
