Check this out! When the book had been closed on the inevitable demise of physical media, I at least, had believed that this angle of development might have gone the way of the dinosaur... then this article jumped out a me. (Thank goodness for material sciences.)
From TechXplore: A DVD-sized disk that can store 1 million movies
A team of photonic engineers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a new type of optical DVD that is capable of holding up to a petabyte of data. The group used a new material to coat the DVDs and new laser techniques to write data. The results are published in Nature.
Interestingly, it was a matter of using new material coating and new lasers.
The type of DVDs currently used to hold movies and data have a capacity of 4.5 gigabytes—enough to store approximately two hours of video. Data is written using a laser to etch a series of zeros and ones onto its surface. In this new effort, the team in China found a way to store significantly more data on a DVD using an entirely new approach.
Their new method involves storing data in 3D instead of as a single layer. The team found they were able to store data on a single disk with up to 100 layers. To create multiple layers on a disk, the team developed a special coating and then developed a way to etch the individual layers using special patterns of light and a dye in the coating that allowed for etching at the nanoparticle scale. This allowed them to store data at an unprecedented level.
Well... unless Big Tech squashes this, they will have to endure a radical change in the market. They usually don't like that. I hope this makes for a real change in the way that market exploitation keeps benefits of new tech away from consumers until they can monopolize the market.
I predict "opportunity lost" as the outcome.
Or is this maybe propaganda?
Or am I wrong for even considering that?
Illustration: https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/202...k-that.jpg
From TechXplore: A DVD-sized disk that can store 1 million movies
A team of photonic engineers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a new type of optical DVD that is capable of holding up to a petabyte of data. The group used a new material to coat the DVDs and new laser techniques to write data. The results are published in Nature.
Interestingly, it was a matter of using new material coating and new lasers.
The type of DVDs currently used to hold movies and data have a capacity of 4.5 gigabytes—enough to store approximately two hours of video. Data is written using a laser to etch a series of zeros and ones onto its surface. In this new effort, the team in China found a way to store significantly more data on a DVD using an entirely new approach.
Their new method involves storing data in 3D instead of as a single layer. The team found they were able to store data on a single disk with up to 100 layers. To create multiple layers on a disk, the team developed a special coating and then developed a way to etch the individual layers using special patterns of light and a dye in the coating that allowed for etching at the nanoparticle scale. This allowed them to store data at an unprecedented level.
Well... unless Big Tech squashes this, they will have to endure a radical change in the market. They usually don't like that. I hope this makes for a real change in the way that market exploitation keeps benefits of new tech away from consumers until they can monopolize the market.
I predict "opportunity lost" as the outcome.
Or is this maybe propaganda?
Or am I wrong for even considering that?
Illustration: https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/202...k-that.jpg
