3-D Storage Systems
Dean
A new breakthrough in data storage.
Imagine being able to hold 500 full-length movies on a single DVD-style disc. Or maybe a small cube.
This isn't the end by any means though. On the bleeding edge we have techniques now where, by controlling the spin on individual electrons of atoms, we can make them represent a 0 or a 1.
The next 10 years are going to make the previous 10 years look slow and primitive.
And yet the money isn't in the media or upgrading to new media: it's in the content.
Just think: you could store every medical scan you ever had on your person, including 3D scans, and have plenty of space left over. You could store the entire Library of Congress, and still have space left over. People would need personal data mining software just to make sense of the digital detritus in their pockets.
That's a great observation Samuel! (Plus I like the alliterative metaphor)
I would agree that we need close scrutiny and demands for coherent and measurable results with the tax money though.
I don't think that there's anything wrong with the government funding blue sky research. I agree that funding blue sky research is actually a valid use of money taken from people under the threat of imprisonment or death.
On the other hand, that this research is being funded by the NSF and not a company who's going to sell it makes me think that we're not likely to see it in stores next year. Or the year after. Hell, you barely see blue-ray or HD-DVD in stores now, and that technology has been reasonable mature (in the research lab sense) for like half a decade at least.
In any case: storage research like this is likely to make its way to private applications over a period of many years, and not immediately.
I'm often a bit puzzled by people who say "yes, but we won't see this immediately in the real world." Well no, of course not. Isn't that apparent if you just read the article? This is obviously on the cutting edge of the latest research. It's liable to take a bare minimum of 5 years to make it to market. 10 is more likely.
Although it's not even the cuttingest of cutting edge. As I say, we have demonstrated now that we can use individual electrons as storage units. That's not theoretical, it's been done, it has happened. How soon before we see that in real-world application? My guess would be a few decades and not just one....
The problem is that every you make a significant leap forward you have to completely turn over the market and the consumer has to begin afresh. (As in many respects so does the manufacturer.)
I had a VHS film collection, then spent a considerable amount replacing my VHS collection with DVD, now blueray, then holographic, then this, then quanta storage, then spintronics?
After a while the costs for the average consumer to turn over becomes prohibitive because he has to buy not only new storage systems, and replacement data, but new readers. A VHS player won't run DVD, and so forth, and so on.
And because every advance in technology leads to a geometric improvement in the next technology (including materials, energy systems, etc.) then technology reaches a point where it turns over faster than the consumer can afford to bear the costs of replacement.
After awhile the consumer doesn't care anymore, I don't in many respects now, and even if he does or can afford to replace his entire library with whatever new data system he thinks he needs, he has to do this every couple of years or so when the next big thing develops.
To hell with it I'll say. It's like the next OS. I'll gladly skip tow, three, or even four or five advances in the developmental chain till something really impressive comes along to make it actually worth the hassle.
I'm not getting the next OS. I'll wait until they develop something physical that is so spectacular it is a vast improvement over my current OS, or wait until a new order of magnitude or criteria develops such as a partially biological Operating System.
Until then I'm not gonna be dazzled by small improvements in technology or front the costs to revamp whatever technology I possess until a truly grand improvement is made or the cost to benefit ratio is sufficiently advantageous.
An advance in "cool" means nothing to me at my age anymore, I've seen too many cool improvements to fork out money, time, hassle, or effort to desire such advances. They cost more in turnover deficits than they deliver in actual capacity.
With so many technological improvements, improvements have to more than simply impress me, or even be marginally beneficial, they have to jump scales of capability to be worth my time and money.
I work in photography, and we have literally thousands of photo shoots every few months. Even though we only load the stuff we're working on, we still have to clean out our storage fast enough that when we get a reorder, we often have to start from scratch.
Imagine being able to keep all of the work layers on every photo you've every printed... oh, that would make it so WONDERFUL when somebody asks for a three-year-old photo! (I swear, the CDs must be SOMEWHERE.)
Aside from hardcore gamers, a consumer who upgrades more often than three to five years (preferably five) is losing more time on maintenance than is gained by the upgrades.
There are plenty of exceptions, but those are my rules of thumb. If productivity is critical to your success, you need an upgrade every couple of years, or your competition will eat your lunch; but if all you're doing is browsing, emailing, and word processing, there aren't enough improvements to matter over short periods. If you buy a high end machine today (always buy a high end machine!), it will be the trailing edge machine for any new software three to five years from now. Those new features will work on it, just slowly.
Yes; mine's just yours without the sugar coating. Because really, how much would expect the government would collect every year if the IRS (et al) had no power to compel people to pay taxes?
"I'm often a bit puzzled by people who say 'yes, but we won't see this immediately in the real world.'"
Ahem:
"The next 10 years are going to make the previous 10 years look slow and primitive."
Incidentally, I really, really doubt that individually controlled electrons is going to be even slightly useful in data storage as close as three decades from now. Quantum mechanics means that your data integrity is going to be difficult (so redundancy is going to significantly eat into your storage size), and I'm really, really, really suspicious that you're going to be able to do this to trillions of electrons which are densely packed. Perhaps they eventually will; arranging atoms on platters will solve at least some of the those problems. But locating particular atoms is going to be tricky, too. It's difficult enough to do that with the pits in a CDROM, which are, in comparison, fricken' enormous.
There are, in general, problems when you get too small. The world stops looking like the illusion of order that we're used to.
Making a thing, and making it useful, worthwhile, or cost effective are entirely different things.