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Stanford's Quantum Hologram Sets Storage Record
eldavojohn writes "It's often assumed that representing data reaches a limit when you get to the point that an atom represents one bit in some form or fashion. But Stanford University researchers have used a quantum hologram model to store the characters 'S' and 'U' by encoding the data at a rate of 35 bits per electron."
I bet recovering data off an atom could prove...... Difficult. :s
They're storing data in a small space, sure, but it's got the same problem that traditional holograms do: it takes a good deal of computation time to figure out how to encode the information you want in wave patterns.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
It's a logical end result of exponential growth.
Actually, that logic is flawed. The assumption that we will continue to see exponential growth forever in anything is pretty flawed, simply because of different laws kicking in. Look at trends in computer ownership, or TVs or anything else that hits its prime and hits it big. For a good while these things do have an exponential growth curve, but obviously that growth cannot continue indefinitely, or people would have to start buying two or three TV sets at a time every couple of days, and then the next week buy 3 TV sets every day, and then every hour....
This is the fundamental problem with extrapolation taken too far. The truth of the matter is that you have no idea what the curve looks like, regardless of how much data you have. It could be exponential growth for thousands of years, and then suddenly take a nose dive and drop back down close to where it started, or perhaps grow faster. Extrapolating too far is foolishness that happens far too often.
I've heard the discussion of converting all matter into computational elements, but a FAR more likely growth curve for computing power is not exponential, but sigmoidal.
Thus, I would argue that converting all matter into computational elements would be the asymptotic 'end game' of technology that we will never quite reach, but always be moving towards (though our progress will slow). Many growth patterns follow a sigmoidal curve.
That's why there is that nasty speed of light constraint in this universe... you can't see past the light horizon... well you can but not in the present time, you only get to see pre-computed archived data.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.