A student has developed a technique to store data on portable paper :-)

When I've read this I've thought "Is this a joke?"

But well, seems interesting, now I can use my bathroom paper roll for other stuff than wiping!

i thought it was a joke too at first. but having gotten the chance to read the article attached, i'm pretty much impressed with the technology. i believe it will gain wide acceptance once it is available publicly -- data storage is really a big thing in this time and age, even with ordinary "computer-literate/techie" people. i just wish that there can be ways to make the data withstand the test of time. having "precious" data stored on paper is sometimes "tricky": it can get wet, it can get burned easily, it can get torn with small effort, it shrivels and get cracked with age, small pieces can be easily misplaced, and many other factors -- which can potentially make it quite problematic to restore/retrieve data stored in them. nonetheless, i suppose these can be overcome with proper care of these huge-data-carrying papers.

Great idea!!!! It's a future
Now i will through my PC away

I had one long before this - it's called writing

Maybe now data about life today will be stored in Records' Offices for centuries to come; historians are worried that in future times there will be no record of life today and this could be the solution. In twenty years time, when current computers become redundant and weighty and this technology doesn't cost millions to buy, we could all be walking around with data-paper in our pockets (I'm sure Hacker and Cracker are wiping their hands in glee already )

When I first read this, I thought OpaQue was playing a joke. But reading the attached image, my only reaction was, "Oh my god, that is such an ingenious idea that if I weren't reading it right now, I would have hardly believed it". It is just so clever and I have no doubt that it'll be the future.

We just have to make sure this future is well-kept, as paper breaks or transforms rather easily, and I'd hate to lose so much data due to a small amount of damage...

I'm gonna bookmark this picture so I can show it to my folks later.

This post has been edited by gameratheart: Dec 6 2006, 08:42 PM

Although this is a great idea, it's not really new. I read some where last years that some people were trying to develop something similar to what is mentioned in the article. I believe it was some sort of rice paper (could be the same thing). Although I haven't heard much about since then.

However due to the fact that American business men are greedy I doubt their will be much of a profit to be made from this. Except for companies that store Terabytes worth of info in huge databases. although I might have missed this in the article they didn't mention the fact how hard this paper was. If you seen paper get soak you notice how quickly it gets torn apart, so the question would be how sturdy this can be due to the fact its biodegradable?

I though that this was a joke until I read the article, and then I though wow, such a great idea. Unfortunaly I am worried about how tough the paper is. I don't want to lose Gigabytes of data just because I dropped it in a puddle, or spilt some coffee on it.

This just seems wierd. Paper...I don't understand how the data gets to the paper...I must read more into this. Seems like a good dea, but aren't we trying to go all electronic? Atleast that's what my school is trying to do, lol.

And what if your dog eats it?