Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Fwd: [PORT-L] Ever greater storage capacities
Just an aside to that:
I was reading a passage from Dr Englebart's Augmenting Human Intellect (1962,
p67) yesterday wherein
it said that a harddisk (consisting of a stack of disks) was 3 feet in diameter
and could store approx 100,000,000 characters in total at a cost of 0.7c per
character. (01)
So that just over a thousand square inches per disk (so maybe 4 thousand sq
inches per harddisk stack), so 1 square inch stored 25,000 chars (so that's
200,000 bits assuming 8-bits per char). (02)
So that's an increase from 20x10^4bits/inch^2 to 50x10^12bits/inch^2 in 40years.
Assuming a linear gradient (total fiction) that would be an increase of
1.2x10^12bits per year!
But the real graph would be an exponential of some order! (03)
Blackout-inducing acceleration... When capitalism wants something enough ... (04)
--
Peter (05)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Park" <jackpark@thinkalong.com>
To: <ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 2:44 PM
Subject: [ba-unrev-talk] Fwd: [PORT-L] Ever greater storage capacities (06)
>
> >From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>
> >To: PORT-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
> >
> >Following is the opening sentence of a report about the
> >potential for new magnetic storage capacities:
> >
> > Seagate researchers now believe they can store as much as
> > 50 terabits per square inch -- equivalent to the entire
> > printed contents of the Library of Congress -- on a single
> > disk drive for a notebook computer.
> >
> >Source: http://sci.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19209.html
> >
> >Other sources report the possibility of storing just one
> >terabit per square inch. That would require a full 50 square
> >inches to store the entire contents of the Library of Congress.
> >
> >In any case, the technology is improving so rapidly that the
> >cost of storing enormous volumes of information -- such as the
> >entire contents of the Internet -- is falling dramatically.
> >
> >There already are companies today that are making periodic
> >snapshots of the entire contents of the Internet and archiving
> >them for posterity (i.e., the next few years). Whether those
> >snapshots are preserved for a longer time period depends on
> >the cost of storing the data and making fresh copies from time
> >to time.
> >
> >That means that the preservation of the treasures of the past
> >depends on the several factors: technology, cost, and the
> >social structures that lead some people to make periodic copies.
> >Those are the same factors that cause scribes in areas as widely
> >separated as medieval Europe and China to preserve the ancient
> >literature.
> >
> >There is no guarantee that similar social structures will always
> >exist -- in fact, there is no guarantee that human society will
> >always exist. But barring some world-wide catastrophe, it is
> >reasonable to assume that there are enough "pack rats" around that
> >somebody somewhere will undertake to preserve the world's art and
> >literary treasures as long as the technology is available.
> >
> >Unfortunately, the major obstacles to preserving the world's
> >resources are the copyright laws and the idiots who are doing
> >their best to make it impossible to copy data. For most of them,
> >long-term preservation is the last thing on their little minds
> >-- their goal is to make a quick buck as quickly as possible.
> >
> >John Sowa
>
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> (07)