John Drescher wrote:
>> Thinking of future, is there any chance that solid state devices (e.g. flash
>> disks) get cheap enough to obsolete tapes?
>>     
> I believe so but this future is at least 10 years away probably
> significantly more.

If we're looking more than 10 years into the future, why be so mundane? 
There are already prototypes for holographic storage and quantum storage 
(though the quantum stuff is more in the pure research stage). Maybe 
we'll be talking about slivers of holographic crystal rather than usb 
memory keys.

In 1998 it would have been unlikely to accurately predict 4G usb memory 
keys hanging off your keychain. We were still paying a lot for 4G disk 
drives to put in servers, though larger drives were becoming available.

Library Archivists are still searching for the holy grail in digital 
archival media and are not happy with anything currently available. 
Think monks in the middle ages. They want something they can put on the 
shelf and expect to last multiple human lifetimes. Even paper and ink 
have to be special to meet their criteria. At present they are not 
satisfied they can even meet one human lifetime with digital media.



---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk AT bio.umass DOT edu>

--------------- 

Erdös 4



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