Endless Collection of Data

This is pretty darned cool:

Imagine being able to put your entire DVD collection on a single disc. And not just your collection, but also that of your family, friends and neighbours … the contents, in fact, of as many as 200,000 DVDs.

It sounds a stretch of imagination, but this is the aim of Professor Min Gu and his team at Swinburne University of Technology’s Centre for Micro-Photonics.

They are three years into a five year project that is looking at how nanotechnology — particularly the use of nanoscopic particles — can be used to exponentially increase the amount of information contained on a single disc.

But the problem I see with it is that the more compressed the storage, the more things we store.  As a people there will never be enough room.  Think about it this way, when the only mass production of information was done by monks copying ancient texts in an abbey (to be fair, the texts may not have been ancient at the time they were doing the copying), vast libraries were created which housed all the shared knowledge of the world.  Printing presses = more libraries. Recordable media, like phonograph records, and more libraries - this time for music and speech.  Micro-fiche and we started also housing photographs, articles, scientific papers and books that way.  CD's = more music, then files and conversations and photo albums and artwork. 

Every innovation means that more of our world is stored and retrievable. 

This discovery might mean that every second of every camera and microphone on earth will be permanently stored. Every moment of people's lives will be recorded for future playback. 

When will it be enough?

When can our memories suffice, and grow and change and let us perceive what happened the way we'd like to remember it rather than the raw data of how it actually occurred?

rick, pessimistic.

Comments

[a rose is a rose]

i would have thought you'd take the exact opposite view. i'm rather shocked

[CV Rick]

I just don't want fact and data storage to get in the way of the things that make us more human and a lot of that is imagination, intended or not.

[Paul]

No matter how much we store, the sum total still follows Sturgeon's Law.

Your sentiment reminded me of Bill Pullman's character in Lost Highway, who said, "I like to remember things my own way, not necessarily the way they happened."

[CV Rick]

I agree with that sentiment exactly, Paul. I've never seen Lost Highway. Is it good?

[a rose is a rose]

bill pullman has been in some quirky roles. i know you didn't ask ME, but i DO like him. i also agree with the sentiment of remembering things MY OWN WAY. hell, i do that now and freely admit it. bob dylan has a line in a song (one too many mornings) that i love: you were right from your side and i was right from mine. we're just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind