In a previous post, we took a look at the zettabyte (ZB) as a legitimate concern for data creation, storage, and organization. And we described the size of the ZB with the example of a ridiculous number of hours of music one would have on a ZB iPod.
Not so ridiculous is the fact that the International System of Units (SI) puts a lot of thought into naming the different prefixes: mega (10E6), gigga (10E9), terra (10E12) up to yotta (10E24); and now a physics student is looking for a name for the next group of 10E27.
Check out this article posted on FoxNews on the issue.
The student is using the SocialNet (Facebook) to help create a new moniker. This can be something fun and admirable. Except...
Interestingly, and perhaps short-sightedly, the prefix "hella" is gaining some traction. It is short-sited because "hell" is a rather terminal concept. Mostly because using hell, as in "a hell of a lot of", would reflect a number as high as you can get. Eventually (and perhaps soon) you are going to need a name for 10E30. So what concept would be a magnitude one thousand times greater than hell? The idea is cute, but that's about it. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it: once you get to hella, there's nowhere else to go.
As a designer, one thing we need to keep in mind when naming things is that name will reflect on us forever either good or bad (think Apple iPad or Chevy Nova).
In this instance, rather than going for the gag, it would be better to think about the the value's place in the numbering schema -- that of, the set prior to 10E30 because it has 10 commas. Since "Yotta" is based on the Greek "octo" (see also Lamar for more detail), perhaps a name based on the Greek "nine" is in order.
One last link. Take a look at this Wikipedia post on naming long numbers. Consider the vastness of data groupings and then ask youself this: "Don't I have anything better to do?"
