Actually Pleno, computers are little boxes. Apple has a computer that is no bigger then a cookie box. Can't find a picture right now, but it's there! It's like a miniture CD Drive. That has a harddrive.

It's called a Mac Mini. Probably the most affordable Mac out there today. Very good computer, for something so small.

Woah, now that is actually very cool, I want a paper database...Though, I'd imagine some amounts of heat would provide enough activation energy for that lovely combustion reaction to wipe it all away >.>
It'd be cool if somebody figured out a way to keep it nice and safe...
Some insulating material, a ceramics cover might work, I dunno how thick it'd have to be or how reasonable it'd be to use it...

Haven't we had something like this before? Something called a microdot? I think this must be a joke.

How would you preserve the paper? Any organic product that is biodegradable, would do exactly that, degrade and become unusable. One way to protect the paper would be to encase it in plastic. But wouldn't that go against one of his objectives, to make the paper easy to dispose of and reduce 'e-waste'?

While the idea sounds neat, I can't see it being implemented in the near future.

The problems with this are that if it was used for record-keeping, the enviroments of the paper-discs would have to be kept within very precise conditions. Too damp and the paper either gets get or is eaten away by mold. Too dry and it could combust. If the room wasn't sealed well enough, one may find that some mouse unwittingly made a bed out of 5Tb of data or some termites have been having a million-Gigabyte lunch.

It certainly does not seem like it would help the problem of current data storage methods becoming outdated. These "discs", if so they may be called (assuming they are round), could leave an even larger gap in our society's recorded history than using current methods would. Paper data would hardly stand the test of time, especially with humanity constantly pushing the world to it's enviromental limits, thanks to war technology.

Another thing is wouldn't these paper data storage sheets be susceptable to ripping, wrinkling, or wearing, as normal sheets of paper are, and as someone already said, what about spills or dropping it in water?

And as if that wasn't enough, couldn't one, in theory, take a high-resolution picture of one of these data sheets and then print a copy that would contain all, or at least most of, the information present? Imagine - stealing movies with a single snap of your camera.

I thought the dog theory was ruled out.

I think this is amazing. All you have to do is keep the paper safe like in a briefcase or something and you can hold tons of info.

The inventor is using weird, yet innovative technique there (by using shapes and colors).

Nevertheless, I know another technique that makes this data storage on paper possible. It's about ORGANIC ELECTRONICS -> PRINTED electronics. I am myself currently studying in electronics area. With selected organic material, one can make a conductive, capacitive, or inductive line depends on the geometry printed and properties of the material itself. So this makes it possible for electronics circuit on the paper, plastic, etc. Flip-flops or latches (the basic of memory) can then be built. Not only data storage, you perhaps ever heard about flexible display. click here.


This may or may not be true. but by good packaging method (wrapping the module by protective plastic), although it is dropped to water there will be no problem. it won't be easily torn as well.

-day

hey guys what if this 'data' is stored as a jpeg file?
i dun care about it in paper but if a A4 jpeg image file can store 450GB, isnt that the mother of all file compression?

i dont really know how big is an A4 jpg or even sizes any other image compression, but i think an A4 file would only need 10mb right?

This post has been edited by styfer: Dec 13 2006, 09:21 AM

Its a really cool Idea. I started to feel bad about all the paper I have thrown when I read the article. I cant imagine how its going to be like when that technology starts being used for anything. Imagine a paper thing Ipod and hard drives, that would really make things ultra portable.