Global data created per year

It is a peculiar feature of the modern age that humanity now produces more data and more scented candles with exactly the same enthusiasm. One imagines a server farm in Oregon humming in harmony with a vanilla-bean soy candle in a Brooklyn apartment. The metaphors write themselves, badly.

Both curves steepened in 2020 because of the same lockdown. Global data creation ballooned as an entire workforce moved to videoconferencing, streaming, and cloud collaboration, while candle sales surged as housebound Americans leaned into cozy-at-home aesthetics and scented their own rooms to mask the fact that they never left them. One trend is measured in zettabytes; the other in wax.

So the correlation is a portrait of a year lived indoors: the laptop uploading, the candle burning. Neither caused the other; both belonged to the same living room. A small flame and a large cloud.