Can Ten Billion Gigs Fit In A Test Tube? 158
Nipple writes: "Using Nanotechnology scientists ar Rice University have been able to store 10 billion gigabytes of data on physical storage small enough to fit into a small vial. The whole story appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and
can be found here." No indication is given of which calculations for data density the tiny vial pictured would be able to hold that much, but the idea of all the books on my bookshelf (and yours, and yours, and yours ... in fact, all the books I ever want to read) stored inside the stylus of my 9-day-battery life, white-LED-backlit wireless anything box is pretty tantalizing.
10cc of Pearl Jam. (Score:1)
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HEHE (Score:1)
Great! But "but"s remain (Score:2)
To compete in the portable sector (and I bet that such an invention will), it will have to be reasonably cheap, and appear before remote storage gets secure and cheap enough --- Why carry your bookshelf (however small or light) if it can be stolen at any time? Why not rely on somebody else to store your data in a secured disk(or vial)farm?
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this post was brought to you by Andreas Fuchs.
Great. Yet another kernel fork. (Score:5)
Actually, I don't really believe this would work (Score:2)
Second: I don't believe it is as of yet (please correct me if i'm wrong) possible to effectively store and retrieve specific data in a vial of fluid, regardless of what they (the scientists at the lab in question) say...
There must be a reason why this theory has been around for so long, and not having made it into our homes yet.
Someone's gotta' say it... (Score:1)
Nice. But still far away. (Score:2)
So, don't get too excited about it. It could as well take 25 years before they get this to work, if ever. There have been more "groundbreaking things" like this, and most of them never make it. If they do make it it would be very cool of course.
Re:Great! But "but"s remain (Score:1)
hmmm (Score:1)
I'm a big fan of molecular computing and the possibilities thereof. .
-s
About time (Score:1)
More interviews of Tour and Reed... (Score:5)
Re:Great! But "but"s remain (Score:2)
must... suppress...
This gives "diskspace dicksize war" a whole new name.
aaargh! Now look what you've made me do!
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this post was brought to you by Andreas Fuchs.
Indexing large storage arrays (Score:3)
find / -name "lost.data" -ls
yeah, right.
I know that there are companies out there that are dealing with this sort of problem already (Zantaz [zantaz.com] archives email for a living... a lot of email) but I have no idea how much processing power it would take to find something is a reasonable time frame, or how it might be indexed.
Are these legitimate concerns or is this just another version of the "indexing the internet" problem?
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~10 exabytes (Score:4)
There's more interesting information about the binary powers here [uiuc.edu]
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I never believe this "cheap to build" hype (Score:1)
"I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."
Research Group Web Page (Score:5)
Quantum computing? (Score:1)
Maybe this is where we'll find an everyday use for quantum computing - searching for files in this much data... since searching is one of the few things that a) we have an algorithm for and b) quantum computing does better than regular computers it could be used to search for data. Just a thought.
Imagining things (Score:5)
Actually, the article doesn't say that they've been able to store anything like that. The article says:
Ten billion gigabytes of data can be stored in this vial, according to Molecular Electronics Corp.'s cofounder, Jim Tour.
And they say that they've demonstrated the use of a molecular form of DRAM. Now these are pretty good advances already, and I believe nanotechnology will definitely change the way we look at computing, but please, Timothy: These guys don't have a secret RAM plant set up ready to conquer the world overnight.
Not just yet, anyway.
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Re:Great! But "but"s remain (Score:3)
I am more interested in how small and cheap they can make these things: with IPv6 providing enough address space for every piece of clothing you will ever own, having a gig of storage in your tennis shoes might be rather interesting... You wouldn't really have to worry taking your PDA with you anymore, if your clothes would automatically talk to each other and keep all your data handy regardless of what you wear. And those into nudism could still wear jewellery... =)
Since they are nanotechnology, would it be possible to inject them into your bloodstream? Then you would never lose your information - and you could exchange information with other people by exchanging bodily fluids. "File sharing" just wouldn't be the same anymore... ("Hi, can you get me the Smith file?" "Yeah, just lift up your skirt, will ya?")
On a serious side, naturally having strong encryption becomes even more important when you have that much storage density.
But, will Windows 2005 occupy five of these? *grin*
Re:Actually, I don't really believe this would wor (Score:2)
Re:hmmm (Score:1)
Re:How many MP3's is that? (Score:3)
Provided I didn't misplace a zero there. There were lots of them.
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Re:Actually, I don't really believe this would wor (Score:1)
Re:forget about the contents of books.. (Score:3)
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x86 compatibility? (Score:1)
Re:I never believe this "cheap to build" hype (Score:2)
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I think i'm missing something (Score:1)
Re:Quantum computing? (Score:1)
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Its not the 10 billion gigs in a test tube ... (Score:5)
Bob.
Actually, PAST time (Score:2)
And that was YEARS ago. Problem is, it doesn't really do us much good if WE cannot make this into a fully functional, flawless prototype. Unfortunately (for IBM's molecular computing), the last thing I heard of it was that they were stuck in data delivery, as they could not be sure which molecule picked up the data (physics dicate that You cannot know BOTH the location AND the vector of an Ion), as they merely threw it into the fray, hoping the right molecule got it.
If this is case with the storage tech, then I CERATAINLY hope they have a good errorcorrection.
But... (Score:1)
Re:Actually, I don't really believe this would wor (Score:1)
"We're at a point where it's just a technology problem that will be solved by some smart graduate student or myself one of these days," Tour said. "This is not far out. This is going to happen."
But with the recent failures of so many other comanies doing the same, would it not stand to reason that Tour's Ida of "not far out" would at the very least be 15-20 years if not more ? I certainly think so.
cybernetics? (Score:2)
assuming an implanted cybernetic interface, it should be possible to send data straight to the brain, but there's got to be some way of physically getting it there
so here's my idea: Books on Pez
Imagine the entire dune anthology, in the form of tasty cinnamon candies, with a sandworm head... you could read the series 20 times in an hour (plus get a hell of a sugar high)
Walter H. Trent "Muad'Dib"
Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, IMHO
Re:Quantum computing? (Score:1)
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portability problems? (Score:1)
While the idea sounds great and I'd love to have it working fine and dandy...
If the technology works anything like actual tube lights, something to keep in mind is that to turn them on they require a high voltage spike.
The second thing I noticed is that they said a glass tube.. have you noticed how careful people often are with glass tubes? Personally, I wouldn't want to drop a glass tube and say "oops, there goes my bookshelf, medical file, penguin, and, oh ya, my holographic house (it'll be a while).
Hope they get this technology ready for mass market!
Re:Quantum computing? (Score:1)
There was an old /. article about it here [slashdot.org].
backlit led? (Score:2)
Re:Actually, I don't really believe this would wor (Score:1)
To protect from data degredation, you can store data in triplicate or more - its not as though you are lacking in space.
Secondly, while you may not believe it, the article is basically saying that they have just proven it works (although I am sure many people didn't believe it when they invented the atomic bomb).
Actually (Score:1)
Problem is if he wants to do data storage by altering a "switch" on each molecule, he should still be able to isolate EACH molecule (data storage unit) or the tech is worthless.
I know he's not gonna tell us HOW he does that (after all, that would be the trick of it wouldn't it?), but I've been unable to find anything that says that he even CAN do that.
I would imagine that it's possible to assemble molecules of different "types", where the "type" is to be used as an identifier, but that would still cause a FEW problems as he would have to WAIT for that molecule to "drift" into his reader. Not exactly the "baudrate" we would want from this tech.
fukin yankees and the metric system (Score:1)
the correct definitions are here [nist.gov]. Until 1998, I fought to the death that a kilobyte = 1024 bytes, but now there are proper definitions for base 2, I will fight to the death kilobyte = 1000 bytes.
Re:Imagining things (Score:1)
Re:Imagining things (Score:1)
Mr. Nixon, you of all people should know that's not true. :)
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Re:Actually, I don't really believe this would wor (Score:1)
Re:Quantum computing? (Score:1)
Re:fukin yankees and the metric system (Score:1)
In a word: "no" (Score:1)
Ten billion gigabytes of data can be stored in this vial, according to Molecular Electronics Corp.'s cofounder, Jim Tour.
Operative word is CAN, not IS. Meaning that by "electrifying" the molecules (about 80*10^15 of those in the vial I would guess from the article), that's the POSSIBLE storage space available in that liquid, if they ever work out the kincks, like: Data degredation (Ok if ít's Organic chemestry, not Biochemestry, that's not an issue), storage, RETRIEVAL (Which I would believe to be a killer), addressing, Physical protection (from the environment, heat, radiation and other stuff that affect molecules), and more.
I would still have to say that it's not possible with currently available tech. In 15-20 years You might see a working prototype that's capable of leaving the lab, but I doubt it will happen before then.
Re:Actually, I don't really believe this would wor (Score:1)
One long fsck (Score:1)
Oh dear, this smells bad (Score:3)
And it will make a hot drink which is almost totally but not quite unlike tea...
Oh please,
Do these people even know what they are talking about? Hype hype hype, but not a sensible sentence to read. It reminds me of the optical processor debacle: computing at the speed of light! while they conveniently forgot that both electrical signals in todays chips and photon in the "computer of the future" go at exactly the same speed in semiconductor materials (about 1/3 of the speed of light in vacuum) and metals (about 2/3 of the speed of light in vacuum), as they are both form of electromagnetic radiation.
Who would need such a hypothetical device, and what data would fill this black hole of a memory - and how would you index it - or transmit it, for that matter.
It would take a lifetime to fill.
Maxwell rules !
Michael
Re:fukin yankees and the metric system (Score:1)
hamsters ad things (Score:1)
Re:fukin yankees and the metric system (Score:1)
Could someone who speaks Timothy's dialect (Score:1)
No indication is given of which calculations for data density the tiny vial pictured would be able to hold that much
Or perhaps it would just be a good idea if articles were proofread before submission
Rich
Re:Great! But "but"s remain (Score:1)
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this post was brought to you by Andreas Fuchs.
Exabytes ? (Score:2)
In fact, I think this can store more information than the human brain.
You speak about storing all of your books in this but I even think you could store much more, like all the uncompressed music records, DVDs, software, etc...
But why the Hell would somebody want to have ALL THE KNOWLEDGE EVER at home in such a small thing ?
Knowledge is made for being shared so I just thing that using a few of these "disks" and simultaneously accessing these from remote computer would be just fine...
Also, a small remark: the more powerful computers become, the stricter the ISO standard become. I guess so big a capacity would lead us to unthinkable levels of data certifications and historization... Imagine to which level somebody could be tracked
Keystroke strength or whatever leading to graphology-like studies aiming at demonstrating that most people are too stressed at work...
Video records (remember, the
Finally, because of stellar exploration I only see one good usage of bigger storage capacity: Storing dates according to universal time (GMT, relativity, Doppler, cosmic coordinates, etc.).
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Ten Billion GB? (Score:1)
Re:Quantum computing? (Score:1)
I guess this means the Transpacitor is Doomed (Score:1)
Re:forget about the contents of books.. (Score:1)
As Keanu says...
Woah...
(I can only squash a few chapters of the Illiad onto my Palm IIIse as I only have some 400Kb for docs)
Great... (Score:1)
Huge Library of books.... (Score:2)
I can think of some many reasons this would be great for mankind and society... unfortunatly, I sincerly doubt the corporations that own these books would be willing to allow such a collection without you paying for each and every book... Such a sad state of affairs.
Re:Oh dear, this smells bad (Score:1)
It would take a lifetime to fill.
Yeah. Ten billion gigabytes ought to be enough for anyone...
Re:Why? (Score:5)
This seems to be another example of the focus of the computing industry: create better and better hardware but use it to run software which hasn't really changed much in the last decade.
People are always making this sort of claim, yet no-one ever provides any evidence to back it up. I thoroughly disagree with your assertion. I say that software has changed a lot in the last decade.
Ten years ago, apps were small, slow, and lacked features. I couldn't do real-time video editing in software, heck I couldn't even playback video in software. Nothing as complex as a web browser existed ten years ago. I didn't have applications like Photoshop or Gimp that allow me to perform very sophisticated image manuipulation.
Try running some 10 year old software on today's hardware. It runs faster, but it feels archaic, feature-less and flat compared with modern software.
And that's just looking at the outside of the software. If you look at the code, its also changed radically, with the introduction of object-oriented programming and large-scale software engineering.
Just seems to be another excuse to create sloppy programs/bloatware.
What you call bloatware, other people refer to as fast, stable, feature-rich software. Of course there are bad applications out there, just as there were ten years ago or twenty years ago. But there are also whole classes of application that just weren't possible a decade ago, not just because the hardware has improved, but also because we understand how to build large-scale software like never before.
Re:hmmm (Score:1)
Re:Exabytes ? (Score:1)
Knowledge is made for being shared so I just thing that using a few of these "disks" and simultaneously accessing these from remote computer would be just fine...
Central storage of knowledge, especially in an easily-modifiable, digital format, is a Bad Thing.
Imagine if all the books on [insert historical episode here] [yahoo.com] were stored in a central place. How easy would it be to rewrite history?
Compare and contrast the thousands of encyclopaedias and reference books stored all over the world, which cannot be recalled and altered. This is one of the reasons I am uncomfortable with the idea of digital media replacing physical media - too easy to revise the past.
Realities -- Hush hush! (Score:1)
We are not allowed to have technology that is extraordinary. Look at what happened to cold fusion -- it would have caused a true upheaval in culture and thus was stamped out.
640Kb out to be enough for anyone (Score:3)
When I blow my nose each of the dna strands in each moleucule will contain about a gigabyte of data each but until it comes with a usb interface how am i supposed to use it?
Books bah (Score:1)
Why am I thinking of having the world in my bathtub?
Do I need 10 billion gigs? (Score:2)
Already lots of people are relying on technology to do trivial things for them.. (Ask your boss to do a division sum.. watch him reach for the calculator). If people could instantly recall anything at the touch of a button they wouldn't bother remembering anything. Do people want to be able to do interesting tasks quicker, or do they simply want a machine to take over their brain processes..
Re:forget about the contents of books.. (Score:1)
Re:cybernetics? (Score:1)
Okay until you find yourself allergic to certain data formations in the spice....
nanonovel storage (Score:1)
Good luck (Score:1)
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How big is a human brain? (Score:2)
Problems with the new technology. (Score:1)
We've 75GB IDE drives from IBM. You used to have to get a SCSI card for that.
I use 3 GBs on my 10 GB harddrive. It's already slow. Can you imagine dealing with a FAT on a drive at one exabyte? It'll be slow. The other question: Is it needed? Well, no. Apart from givin Microsoft a new way to give meaning to the phrase 'code bloat', all you'll get out of these drives is wasted space. Like having a compact warehouse in the middle of a wasteland.
I can forsee a new problem, too. We already have some information loss/byte rot on current harddrives-- if you squish the bytes too closely together, they're bound to lose their charge, right?
Imagine this on an atomic level. They better be using some strong compound, because it would just suck if all my priceless data would be lost in a small bump.
And how are you supposed to back up all that data?
Just thinking.
--Wormwood
Tantalizing (Score:1)
Files (Score:1)
Public subsidy of private profit (Score:2)
This is another case of universities prostituting themselves out for for future funding.
Can anyone say cold fusion?
Re:Great! But "but"s remain (Score:1)
One chemical I used (EGF) was $250/5 ug
Re:Great! But "but"s remain (Score:1)
And I'm sure, somehow, pay-per-use and no-resale or review will be slipped in. Oh, the joy!
There's no back-up quite like the dead tree copy. Particularily if it's _not_ code.
The imminent death of the Book has been forecast more times in the last 30 years than I care to recount.
A lot of mp3 time (Score:1)
1*10^19bytes * 8 bits/byte=
8*10^19 bits / 192000bits/sec=
4.17*10^14sec / 60 sec/min=
6.94*10^12min / 60 min/hr=
1.16*10^11hrs / 24hrs/day=
4.82*10^9days / 365days/year=
1.32*10^7 years
I'd get to Alpha Centari before I had the chance to listen to my whole drive, or the restaurant at the end of the universe.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Only 100 books will fit... (Score:1)
That's the only problem with the "all the books in the world" utopian stance. There's no way you'd get the rights to do it.
Re:forget about the contents of books.. (Score:1)
General estimates on the number of elementary particles in the universe yield numbers on the order of 10^80. How could you record the entire universe in something smaller than itself?
It's rather like the idea of predicting the future by building a computer to determine it based on computing the physics at the particle level; even without the Heisenberg uncertainty, the smallest computer that could do this is
Re:How many MP3's is that? (Score:1)
Yeah, but I'd die before I could ever finish backing it up on floppies...
Hmm. The dangers of missing commas (Score:2)
Those tiny scientists really can work wonders...
Re:Actually, I don't really believe this would wor (Score:2)
Just because you can't 'see' nor 'believe' it, has no impact on whether it will be possible. Do you really think that all the technology that we currently rely on will stay the same forever?
I make no claims to know the future, except to say that I believe that nobody can understand the massive amounts of change that are going to occur, as technology continues on at this dizzying pace.
Talk like this holds back those innovations and holds back innovators from doing what they do. They change the way we work, the way we live, our hobbies and passtimes. They change the food we eat, and that house we live in.
Everybody should support those who research new ideas, some might call them 'radical', but i call them 'imaginative'. Why is it that people feel the need to constantly, argue against new thoughts and ideas? Why is it that everybody has to disbelieve every new and slightly different idea that somebody spends all of the time researching? Why can't everybody be more accepting?
I challenge all who need proof, all who will not believe until they see, to go out there and find your proof. Whether it be proof that the idea might not be feasible, or you might find proof of its possibilities. At least you would be accomplishing something useful.
Years or Decades to finish. (Score:2)
Well that's just great. Maybee if they weren't so concerned with their patents and secrets then they would collaborate with the scientific community and we could have this technology in our boxes a little sooner.
"But I can't turn in my assignment today... (Score:3)
Re:Why? (Score:3)
Furthermore, their has been a massive infrastructure shift in the last few years that, while not blatantly visible, will probably radically change the way we program and use computers.
Remember not so long ago when an application was a monolithic binary with a few config files? Now that same app is more likely to consist of a tiny frontend loader for multiple task-specific libraries, several of which may be used by multiple programs.
Back in The Day, "late binding" was a neat idea, but horridly inefficient. Given a few years to work out some of the bugs, coupled with incredible hardware advances, we now have some pretty usable object systems.
Think about Bonobo (sp?). Want online docs for your program? Throw together some HTML and call a globally-available browser. Noone really needs to write their own text editor anymore. The same holds for many other commonly-used functions.
This move has been underway for quite a while. It's been quite some time since an app needed to implement its own network stack. However, only recently have such high-level constructs been available as linkable objects.
This is part of what those CPU cycles and RAM bytes are used for. All of this linking, dynamic loading, and these powerful components take some horsepower. However, no coder in his right mind would go back to the old way without very specific reasons (embedded controllers, bare-metal recovery systems, etc.).
Re:Could someone who speaks Timothy's dialect (Score:3)
No indication is given of which calculations for data density the tiny vial pictured would be able to hold that much
Certainly!
En Français:
On ne donne aucune indication dont les calculs pour la densité d'enregistrement de données la fiole minuscule décrite pourraient tenir cela beaucoup
Auf Deutsch:
Keine Anzeige wird gegeben, von der Berechnungen für Datendichte die kleine Phiole, die dargestellt wurde, können würden, das viel anzuhalten
In italiano:
Nessun' indicazione è data di cui le calcolazioni per densità di dati la fiala molto piccola descritta potrebbero tenere quello molto
Em Português:
Nenhuma indicação é dada de que os cálculos para a densidade de dados o vial minúsculo retratado poderiam prender muito isso
En Español:
No se da ninguna indicación de la cual los cálculos para la densidad de datos el frasco minúsculo representado podrían sostener eso mucho
Have a nice day!
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Re:fukin yankees and the metric system (Score:2)
Your life must be pretty cheap, if you're willing to sacrifice it over definitions created by an ivory-tower committee with little regard to the real world, or real-word usages of the terms which have been in use for nearly as long as there have been binary computers.
Myself, I'll fight to the death over something that matters, but not whether 2^10 Bytes is pronounced kilobytes (kB) or kibibytes (kiB). Of course, if they'd been smart, they would have made the abbreviated nomenclature more flexible, with k(sub)2B. Then, when we have trinary computers (Heinlein fans, anyone?), we could have units of 3^10 abbreviated as k(sub)3(/sub)whatevers. Comming up with nomenclature a little less asinine than "Kibi" is left as an excersize for the class (hint: randomly generated syllables would probably be an improvement).
the Ultimate library...would you really want it? (Score:3)
Imagine replacing all of these volumes with a tiny vial on the bookshelf. Sterile, barren shelves. Sure, the world is now at your fingertips, but the whimsy is gone. It's just not the same.
Flamebait? (Score:2)
Hopefully, by then, FAT will be obsolete. But regardless, I'm positive that the scientists involved here aren't going to bring to market an unusable technology. If it's too slow, it won't sell. They'll have to make it faster. End of story.
You sound like someone asking about sending people to the moon... "You can't send people to the moon! There's no oxygen! They'll die!" No they won't, silly... we'll solve that problem long before we get there.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with this technology is what several other insightful people have pointed out -- it's PRIVATEly held. That means there's an extremely finite amount of resources being put into it. If they'd share the science all around, we could have this stuff better, cheaper, and faster.
Why does it all have to be about money these days? Doesn't anyone still care about progress?
Re:~10 exabytes (Score:2)
Aside: personally, I think we should be teaching kids how to count in binary from kindergarten on. How, you ask? Just think of your 10 fingers as a 10-bit register where straight/up=1 and folded/down=0 (if you want, just use 8 fingers if you want to think in 8-bit bytes, use your thumbs for sign or parity bits or something). This lets you count all the way from 0 up to 2^10-1 (1023) without getting unshod or naked! Of course, the numbers 4 and 128 would then have to be banned in school, since they're obscene gestures (in the U.S. at least, e.g. substitute 12 and 192 in U.K.).
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Re:Indexing large storage arrays (Score:2)
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No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
Orthogonality lost in a blaze of bigotry? (Score:2)
You do understand what orthogonal means, right? Or are you too blinded by your anti-american bigotry to grasp the notion that rule by design by closed committee is one of the least competent way to develop anything (remember the 7-level OSI network model? Seen any implimentations around lately?)
As an example of one of the most open and successful methods for developing standards, take a look at how the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) operates, and the standards they have created. (Hint: you're making use of a whole bunch of them everytime you read slashdot.)
Why aren't the patents public domain? (Score:2)
Re:Indexing large storage arrays (Score:2)
I think you're supposed to use a modern filesystem instead of 70s legacy. Perhaps this could be a new niche for BeOS...? "BeOS: The media^U^U^U^U^Uwhere-the-hell-did-I-put-that-file OS."
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Re:the Ultimate library...would you really want it (Score:2)
There's just something about books on the shelf, all lined up in rows.
[...]
Imagine replacing all of these volumes with a tiny vial on the bookshelf. Sterile, barren shelves. Sure, the world is now at your fingertips, but the whimsy is gone. It's just not the same.
I used to think just like you. Here's the reality, though:
I have a lot of books. I mean, a *lot* of books. I've been a voracious reader since I was in 3rd or 4th grade, now, I've got well over a thousand books (I have no idea how many actually, nearly all sci-fi). My wife is also a big reader, but doesn't own nearly as many (fiction) books -- say 200-300. The nine-foot tall shelves in the living room are full, with books piled in front of and on top of other books. My home office has the 70-80 computer-related books I've used most recently, plus, of course, all of the software packages and manuals I've collected in the course of doing my job. My wife's home office has a few of her business books, plus a closet full of shelves filled with more fiction. The plant shelves in the guest room and in our master bedroom have books piled on top of them. We bought a china cabinet (finished it ourselves) for our breakfast nook just to hold cookbooks.
It's an organizational nightmare. I've bought books at the bookstore that I'd forgotten I owned. It's been a long time since I even _tried_ to put 'em in any kind of order. I've spent half an hour looking for books I *know* I own -- but can't seem to locate the shelf they're on.
Now, although my 300+ videotape collection is in similar shape (mainly because it's a pain to write down the titles to all six "Babylon 5" episodes on the spine of the tape), my 700+ CD collection is in good order, mainly because I can keep 'em all in one place, and they don't take up walls and walls of room.
If all this was digitized, sure, I'd lose out on some interesting decorating. But I'd rather be able to find what I'm looking for without a lot of hassle, and put up some art in its place.
I admit, my wife and I have more books than anyone else I know. But my wife is a professor at the local university. She's got a few hundred books in her office -- and she needs 'em all (she's a sociologist). So do all of the other faculty stuffed into their 8x10 offices. It's sad really, seeing these people literally wedged into their offices along with the information they need to do their research.
Sure, physical books are neat. But there are some real disadvantages to having a lot of 'em. I'd rather have the world at my fingertips so I can spend more time using the information instead of trying to manage it.
Re:Huge Library of books.... (Score:2)
Even if it was merely restricted to the books no longer in copyright (and/or out of print) it would be a godsend - There are literally thousands of books that would be bought gladly by someone, if he could just find a bookshop with a second-hand copy, because they are out of print - and then there are all the schoolkids reading classics for their lessons; can you imagine what a relief it would be for parents to buy such a gadget ONCE, and have all the set books for their child's entire schooling?
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