How Data Became Big
In addition to researching A Very Short History of Data Science, I have also been looking at the history of how data became big. Here I focus on the history of attempts to quantify the growth rate in the volume of data or what has popularly been known as the information explosion (a term first used in 1941, according to the OED). The following are the major milestones in the history of sizing data volumes plus other firsts or observations pertaining to the evolution of the idea of big data. Please let me know if you think there’s a relevant event, milestone, study, or observation I overlooked.
http://whatsthebigdata.com/2012/06/06/a-very-short-history-of-big-data/#more-501