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How Science Fiction Imagines Data Storage (hpe.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the burning-chrome dept.

Esther Schindler (Slashdot reader #16,185) shared this story from Hewlett Packard's Enterprise blog: Storage is a staple of both science and science fiction, and forms the basis, or a crucial component, of many a piece of speculative fiction... [H]ere are eight past visions of the storage future that either passed their error checks or succumbed to bit rot.

Why store vast quantities of data on a device when you can just slap it into someone's head?
The article acknowledges that in many science fiction stories, data is simply preserved using such primitive technologies as "the written word" and "brute-force [human] memory," as well as ordinary real-world storage technologies like the server room in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, or basic non-cloud-based computers. But there's also wetware -- think "Johnny Mnemonic "-- and the data crystals in Babylon Five.

The article even acknowledges that time Batman beat Mr. Freeze by carving binary code into a wall, giving future generations the recipe for antifreeze.

78 comments

  1. Rollerball bubble memory by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 1

    One of the funniest things I saw was in Rollerball, where one of the protagonist was shown the computer who "knows" everything, storing it in bubble memory, implemented as a huge aquarium with bubbles rising up from the bottom

    1. Re:Rollerball bubble memory by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 2

      Ah, I found the movie sequence: https://youtu.be/qmTWhvWgST0?t...

    2. Re:Rollerball bubble memory by quonset · · Score: 2

      Information wasn't stored in bubble memory. That was a cooling tank, just like people use liquid cooling today. Mainframe computers used liquid cooling as far back as 1964, almost a decade before the movie came out. Similar to the article, the producers used what they knew about big computers (i.e mainframes) and back then it was liquid cooling.

      You can tell the bubbles aren't the memory when near the end of the video it shows the "temperature" getting hotter (the red color) and the bubbles becoming more dense (just like what happens in boiling water).

    3. Re:Rollerball bubble memory by umghhh · · Score: 1

      Looked like a basement of nuclear power plant.

    4. Re: Rollerball bubble memory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory

    5. Re:Rollerball bubble memory by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 1

      Like the computer in Logan's Run... There is no sanctuary... LOL

      --
      Mostly random stuff.
    6. Re:Rollerball bubble memory by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      See the vid. It was a "memory pool", and the bubbles rising indicated increased thinking -- whatever a memory pool is, the thinking is the bubbles rising through the memory pool.

      The red was overheating, but clearly from the increased bubbling of increased thinking.

      No, none of that makes any sense. It is Hollywood.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    7. Re: Rollerball bubble memory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IIRC in the novelization of "The Wrath of Khan," the scientists on Regula use some form of bubble memory to store their simulations.

      Khan goes berzerk when he finds all the data gone and the only thing left in memory is a video game!

  2. Missing a few methods by isj · · Score: 1

    - Writing data to DNA sequences (ST:TNG "The Chase")
    - Rotating storage (large ceramic rotating cylinders read/write with lasers. In a Alastair Reynolds novel (cannot remember which one).
    - Same principle as delay lines, but using mirrors on remote planets. It does have to be repeated/refreshed but so does plain RAM. What is the capacity of an infrared laser across 2 light-days?

    1. Re:Missing a few methods by meglon · · Score: 1

      - Writing data to DNA sequences (ST:TNG "The Chase")

      There was an early James Blish novel where he uses DNA for memory (although i can't remember which one, ironically). The programing needed to run a military aircraft was stored in anaerobic bacteria so that if the aircraft was shot down, the containment vessel would rupture and the bacteria would die.... taking with them the secret programs. At least i think it was Blish. Been 40 years at least since i read that; seems some of my anaerobic bacteria may have already died.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    2. Re:Missing a few methods by Babel-17 · · Score: 1

      That reminds me, Iain M. Banks did something similar in Against A Dark Background. One of the most powerful persons on a far distant world left the location of a secret vault embedded in a servant. When in contact with one of his descendant's DNA, the former servant revealed the knowledge he was unaware of. How that went down was pretty neat.

    3. Re:Missing a few methods by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      - Writing data to DNA sequences (ST:TNG "The Chase")
      - Rotating storage (large ceramic rotating cylinders read/write with lasers. In a Alastair Reynolds novel (cannot remember which one).
      - Same principle as delay lines, but using mirrors on remote planets. It does have to be repeated/refreshed but so does plain RAM. What is the capacity of an infrared laser across 2 light-days?

      One of the more wry, amusing short science fiction stories that I read years ago dealt with the conundrum of where to store all of the vast informations of mankind. The humans decided to ship their memory storage containers, station wagon style, to another part of the universe, only to meet another civilization with the same problem and bright idea - but headed towards our piece of the universe. Can't remember the name of the story.

  3. Bat's Birthday. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    " The article even acknowledges that time Batman beat Mr. Freeze by carving binary code into a wall, giving future generations the recipe for antifreeze."

    Batman's birthday is coming up the 30th. Watch for free.

  4. Clear crystals are a bad idea by unfortunateson · · Score: 2

    I always laughed at Babylon 5's data crystals: What good is something you can't label? Even an SD card is tough, MicroSD out of the question (you generally just install and forget about them anyway, until it's time to upgrade). But is that my engineering reports to give to Captain Sheridan, or my collection of Centauri porn with full attributes?

    --
    Design for Use, not Construction!
    1. Re: Clear crystals are a bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah science fiction gets everything the wrong way, in many ways.
      For some reasons time travel is thought of as difficult but faster than light travel is thought of as easy and always settings allow high speed travel but leave time as a mysterious thing yet to be cracked. Wrong. Faster than light travel is a huge problem. Time travel maybe not so. Again, scifi assumed all disease is cured. Nobody has heart disease in scifi but nobody has figured out how to tell the changeling from the captain. So they assume medicine is solved but basic logic and psychology not solved.
      Another example: why does the enterprise always without exception meet another ship, the helmsman says their hailing us, the captain says this is so and so from the enterprise, and only then does the screen show the alien replying. It's all nonsense.

    2. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IIRC those did have a flat end opposite where they were inserted. Not that that there was anything written on them but it seems a sharpie would work well.

    3. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      Will the good Captain complain, either way?

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    4. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

      You use different colours of crystal to separate them of course.
      Reports to the Captain are clear.
      Centauri porn are blue
      Recordings from Commander Ivanova's quarters are green

    5. Re: Clear crystals are a bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oops you handed them to an alien child

    6. Re: Clear crystals are a bad idea by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      When a ship hails another they open an audio and possibly a video feed to the other ship giving the standard information of who they are. The captain of the hailed ship then says whether or not to display the video when they reply. There are plenty of times that they make the other ship, or they make the "good guys", wait.

      It's the standard thing that you get when you video call someone today. They see who is calling and can choose when to view your camera.

    7. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2

      Or purple.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    8. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I always laughed at Babylon 5's data crystals:

      GOD that show was bad.

    9. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by Esther+Schindler · · Score: 2

      No, green!

    10. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Stargate also had unmarked data crystals. And control crystals.

    11. Re: Clear crystals are a bad idea by itsdapead · · Score: 1

      For some reasons time travel is thought of as difficult but faster than light travel is thought of as easy and always settings allow high speed travel but leave time as a mysterious thing yet to be cracked.

      Its called dramatic necessity - a space show needs FTL to get to the planet of the week, whereas too-easy time travel would mean that every week you'd have to contrive a new reason why you couldn't use time travel to resolve the plot.

      Wrong. Faster than light travel is a huge problem. Time travel maybe not so.

      Or, possibly, the two things are logically equivalent - one can always be used to achieve the effect of the other. But maybe your FTL drive won't work (or you may risk existence failure) if you try to use it to violate causality... or perhaps you just hate the paperwork caused if you violate the Prime Temporal Directive, not to mention the crippling tax implications becoming your own grandparent.

      Again, scifi assumed all disease is cured. Nobody has heart disease in scifi but nobody has figured out how to tell the changeling from the captain.

      Both unfair in a thread mentioning B5 which included (a) the doctor finding the cure to a plague just after the last member of the affected race had died, (b) a major (alien) character very nearly dying from a heart attack (wrong heart - the other one could have been fixed) and at least one occasion where the changeling was found out via a combination of a brain scan and common sense (but Our Hero knowingly went along with the ruse because the alternatives were bad).

      Another example: why does the enterprise always without exception meet another ship, the helmsman says their hailing us, the captain says this is so and so from the enterprise, and only then does the screen show the alien replying. It's all nonsense.

      You mean they missed out the bit where they have to wait while the latest Skype update installs, then the captain asks the helmsman to send the other ship a text telling them that their audio is muted and to press the little speaker icon with a cross through it, and there's a massive feedback howl before they finally start speaking only for the captain to grawdlually looooose th th the ababababiiiiility to spk because there's a delayed echo of his own voice coming over the speakers...

      Seriously - videoconferencing has been a thing for a decade or two now and it's still a crapshoot for techies and totally beyond the wot of management. Also, we now know that the Enterprise only had viewscreens because the former captain couldn't abide holograms.

      --
      In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
    12. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

      But in purple, I'm stunning!

    13. Re: Clear crystals are a bad idea by subie · · Score: 0

      IBM was experimenting with lasers to store data in small crystal cubes. And dont forget the 5d glass or something storage that last thousands if years.

    14. Re: Clear crystals are a bad idea by fazig · · Score: 1

      What you mean is called enabling devices.
      They are used in fiction to enable certain plot developments in a story.

      Here mainstream SciFi TV series have a very bad reputation for throwing these around carelessly, basically using them like magic while burying that magic under a myriad of technobabble.

      From a story telling perspective I also have to disagree on the time travel vs. FTL thing. While both may be impossible for all we know, time travel is usually the far more lazy choice for a story writer as an enabling device. Why?

      Nobody really understands how time travel into the past would work. It's not something that we can study using physics. So all of our ideas about it rely on works of fiction. Would it work like Back to the Future, where all your actions in the past would somehow affect your future self in the past? Would it work like in the Butterfly Effect, where you can't meet your past self because you are your past self. And where actions in the past affect your future (which may be in alternative timelines), but only when you 'travel back to the future'? Would it work by creating alternative time lines that run in parallel, where you practically remain untouched but only the world around you changes? All while things in other timelines remain to be like they were? This last one also takes care of things many time travel paradoxes.
      The bottom line is, who knows? And that is the problem, as a writer can justify pretty much whatever with time travel by inventing their own time travel mechanics/dynamics.

      FTL is a different beast. I dare to wager that most people understand the concept for travelling in the 3 dimensions. You want to reach a distant target? It'll take you some time to get there. Divide the distance travelled by the time it took and you get your average velocity. Easy enough.
      What FTL does here first and foremost is to reduce travel times by increasing velocities (beyond what we know is possible without losing information in the process).
      It's analogous to technological advancements like horse drawn carriages, ships, trains, cars, and eventually aeroplanes. All these advancements helped to reduce travel times, to get humans to distant places in a more timely fashion. This may also be one of the reasons why so many SciFi writers see FTL as a given in the future.
      People roughly know what to expect from FTL exactly because of those real world analogies to methods of travelling. It's implied that it requires some kind of engine, which requires certain conditions to work and may not work under other conditions. An engine that can fail or break like any piece of technology. Here a writer can't be as sloppy and or lazy without a higher risk of breaking suspension of disbelief and possibly alienating their audience.

      Of course you don't have to use either one of those enabling devices if you're a writer work the money. But I think it's easy to see why FTL is the preferred method for most space sciences fiction.

    15. Re:Clear crystals are a bad idea by bickerdyke · · Score: 1

      I always laughed at Babylon 5's data crystals: What good is something you can't label? Even an SD card is tough, MicroSD out of the question (you generally just install and forget about them anyway, until it's time to upgrade). But is that my engineering reports to give to Captain Sheridan, or my collection of Centauri porn with full attributes?

      IMHO one of the main reasons why CD-RW failed. (of course besides the battle vs. CD+RW, and plain CD-R becoming dirt cheap, solving also the labeling problem.)

      --
      bickerdyke
  5. The cloud, just say no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The article reads like an advertisement for cloud storage. It is the sort of garbage a CIO who is better at golf than engineering or technology would spout.

    The cloud is great for some things, but without physical access control there is zero way you can be confident someone isn't copying every piece of your data this very second. Sure you can encrypt it, but you should only put data in the cloud that you are OK with being decrypted. Just because the encryption looks very strong now doesn't mean it won't be considered stupidly weak in a decade or two.

    1. Re:The cloud, just say no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure you can encrypt it, but you should only put data in the cloud that you are OK with being decrypted.

      The interesting thing is IPv6 is 64 bits. Memory today is 64 bits, and will likely be such for the foreseeable future. Basically if we wanted to a 128bit address could pretty much access almost any storage connected to the internet.

      You would need a 128bit compiler, that does all the tricks needed to run on a 64 bit computer, including caching local copies of current work, updating remote copies, etc.

      Imagine a search on the new Google that effectively searches every bit of online data on the planet in every computer in existence. It then returns the locations of results and other metadata for the user to further explore...

      None of this is practical since it would violate every principle of security, but it is interesting...

  6. The Colors of Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Marion Zimmer Bradley's "The Colors of Space" They have space ships capable of interstellar flights but they have to pause and switch out the tape reels on the computer. Awesome.

    1. Re:The Colors of Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This just shows that in the 1950s-1960s they assumed that physical science would just keep growing at the same rate. Biplanes to airplanes to jets to rockets to the stars.
      They completely misunderstood that while ignoring the fact that data processing relies on things that can get smaller.

      That's why you still have Space Nutters crying over their missed 1960s space prophecies.

    2. Re:The Colors of Space by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Andre Norton's space ships were like that, except they used wire spools instead of tape. (Which is an even older technology.)

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    3. Re:The Colors of Space by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      If you mean inscribed on the wire, that's the same as the Outer Limits episode "Demon With a Glass Hand" by Harlan Ellison. They had encoded data on a wire, then wrapped it for use as a solenoid, presumably to hide it from his pursuers.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    4. Re:The Colors of Space by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      ...which was mentioned in passing in the article.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    5. Re:The Colors of Space by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Inscribed on the wire, yes. My understanding is that wire voice recorders preceded tape recorders. ...I just now looked it up, and wire recorders were invented just before the 20th century and were used up to 1960, primarily for dictation.

      In many of Norton's early stories navigation was completely automatic, with the route encoded on tiny spools of wire. In Galactic Derelict (1959) humans accidentally launch a derelict alien space ship. Once they get to their destination, they have to use tiny precision tools to rewind the wire spool in order to get back home. This is apparently how we thought of storage back in the fifties.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  7. From the Article by Barny · · Score: 1

    Cloud cloud cloud.

    Does the author not realize that when you have latency measured in minutes, hours, days and years, the cloud might not be a very good choice for storage?

    --
    ...
    /me sighs
    1. Re:From the Article by Bonker · · Score: 2

      HP's 'Enterprise' blog.

      Yeah, it's a fucking advertisement. Way to pay the bills, Slashvertisements!

      'Store your data in the cloud so we can sell more server-room class hard drive arrays! Don't store that shit at home. You know you what happens at home? Mexicans. Mexicans break into your house and steal the platters right out of your cheap TB hdds. DO NOT STORE YOUR DATA AT HOME. WE'RE BEGGING YOU!'

      --
      The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    2. Re:From the Article by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      'Store your data in the cloud so we can sell more server-room class hard drive arrays! Don't store that shit at home. You know you what happens at home? Mexicans. Mexicans break into your house and steal the platters right out of your cheap TB hdds.'

      Okay, not gonna lie- that made me laugh.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    3. Re:From the Article by srmalloy · · Score: 1

      And always remember that when you put your data out on the cloud, the entity running the cloud storage service can destroy it at will. And at the point where they can destroy your data regardless of your desire to preserve it, you don't own it; they do.

    4. Re:From the Article by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      It was obvious from the title and the author that it was going to be content-free.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:From the Article by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Cloud can haz cheeseburder thought? Rite?

      Cloud can haz Taco Tuesday, or banned?

    6. Re:From the Article by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

      Not that I'm disagreeing with the advertising critique, but HPE has a pretty decent line of "local storage" called 3Par. They are one of the few DoD approved storage systems on the market.

  8. Those who forget the past... by Iwastheone · · Score: 0

    It is my opinion that our human race is either on the brink of greatness or of self-annihilation. The next 100 or so years will decide which way we go. We have the ability, intelligence and awareness to alter future possible outcomes and to change our DNA makeup, possibly creating the next evolution of the human race. Or, we can hide our heads in the sand, keep arguing meaningless political viewpoints and miss out on possible solutions. We can forget/omit on purpose the past, or learn from the past and move forward. There should not be any 'us vs. them' mentality, just how do we continue furthering all life on our thin little orb.

    1. Re:Those who forget the past... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 0

      I don't know about the annihilation part, but I think a slow, bumpy ride to the bottom is more likely.

      By the time people realize that shit is seriously screwed up it'll probably be too late do anything effective. (And it's possible things are there right now, we just haven't hit the "realize" part of the process.)

      The world is fragile in lots of ways- global infrastructure, global economy, susceptibility to pandemic, etc etc.

      The fact is that it would take a lot less work than most people think to turn shit upside down for the vast majority of people on the planet.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    2. Re: Those who forget the past... by peragrin · · Score: 1

      Yes it is fragile it also won't disappear. People will remember the good old days

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    3. Re:Those who forget the past... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      It is my opinion that our human race is either on the brink of greatness or of self-annihilation.

      If greatness was that likely wouldn't there already be somebody great, and wouldn't they have visited us?

      I don't mean like Trump. I mean spacefaring aliens.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    4. Re:Those who forget the past... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      No, it won't be a slow, bumpy ride to the bottom unless government gets out of control.

      If anything, with more economic freedom in China, progress should accellerate even further.

      The counter-intuitive result of Simon's observations is that, given economic freedom, people solve problems faster than they become serious problems.

      Calm thy heart about the future, even with AGW.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  9. garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any non-trivial amount of data to be processed will take so long to load on any consumer device that they'll think it has crashed and reboot before it has begun.

    1. Re:garbage by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      I blame insensate modern programmers who severed progress indicators from actual measurement of progress. So seeing a spinning wheel or emptying trash or constantly refilling bar leaves you guessing as to whether the process has actually stalled, which was why progress indicators were created in the first place.

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      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  10. Card-Index from brave new world. by Edward+Nardella · · Score: 2

    No longer anonymous, but named, identified, the procession marched slowly on; on through an opening in the wall, slowly on into the Social Predestination Room. “Eighty-eight cubic metres of card-index,” said Mr. Foster with relish, as they entered. “Containing all the relevant information,” added the Director. “Brought up to date every morning.” “And co-ordinated every afternoon.” “On the basis of which they make their calculations.”

    --
    My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
  11. As the Freemasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have to store the ancient mysteries in a vault that can survive flood, and a vault that can survive fire, representing the two largest types of cataclysms we periodically have in this realm.

    A bronze pillar and a stone pillar to mark the cache...

  12. Minority Report by PPH · · Score: 1

    Anderton (Cruise) is viewing a bunch of files, manipulating them with hand gestures. Then, he drags them to (probably) a disc icon, unplugs some sort of memory module, walks across the room and plugs the module into another machine.

    His office LAN must be even worse than mine.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Minority Report by wierd_w · · Score: 1

      Or his SSD simply has more throughput than typical office LAN cabling permits.

      Considering that an NVME SSD can deliver a whopping 32GBit, you would need more than (because of transmission errors and the many quirks the different load balancing algos introduce) 32 bonded gigabit cables, and hardware capable of handling the link aggregation (which is not normally found in a LAN, and much more often found in a SAN instead) to get the same degree of performance.

      It's probably just cheaper to dump it onto a fast, and very spacious storage device, then drop it on the target system.

      See also "Cannot beat the throughput of a minivan loaded with magnetic tape."

    2. Re:Minority Report by wierd_w · · Score: 1

      My bad, NVME can drive at 32gigaBYTES per second, so you would need appreciably more bonded ethernet cables than cited above, but that just makes it even more absurd to expect that in a LAN.

      "Hold on, I have to plug in more than 256 bonded ethernet cables for my workstation, AND IN THE RIGHT PORTS--- Give me a bit to set that up ok?"

    3. Re:Minority Report by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

      My theory is that it's more "security related", as in certain systems are monitored and other's aren't on the same scrutiny levels. As his activities where enough to trip up the psychics...

    4. Re:Minority Report by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Tons of security to stop some yokel from off the street from using it. Very little security to stop those in power from misusing it.

      Very realistic.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  13. I was hoping for a sci-fi website instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was expecting a sci-fi website article, which focused on specific storage devices in science fiction, such as a Romulan Optolythic data rod.

    Forensics can recover large amounts of the data, but are not able to determine if the rod is genuine, or a forgery.

  14. Chronology of Gibson's memory devices? by shanen · · Score: 1

    The article mentions Gibson's character Johnny Mnemonic (which also used to be the BBS handle of Mike Godwin of the eponymous law). Just now I'm almost done with Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive © 1989, which has a huge memory and computing device (the Aleph in an external package. However, I think this novel was written long after Johnny Mnemonic appeared (because jm was using the handle in the mid-80s).

    Mona Lisa Overdrive also talks a lot about the shape of cyberspace, which now maps to visualization of various aspects of the Internet. In epistemological terms, I think that "expertise" involves (1) an understanding the overall shape of the solution space, (2) specific knowledge of many data points that span significant portions of the solution space, and (3) skills in applying the expertise to solve new problems.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    1. Re:Chronology of Gibson's memory devices? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "On the most basic level, computers in my books are simply a metaphor for human memory: I'm interested in the hows and whys of memory, the ways it defines who and what we are, in how easily memory is subject to revision. When I was writing Neuromancer, it was wonderful to be able to tie a lot of these interests into the computer metaphor. It wasn't until I could finally afford a computer of my own that I found out there's a drive mechanism inside—this little thing that spins around. I'd been expecting an exotic crystalline thing, a cyberspace deck or something, and what I got was a little piece of a Victorian engine that made noises like a scratchy old record player. That noise took away some of the mystique for me; it made computers less sexy. My ignorance had allowed me to romanticize them."
        – William Gibson

  15. The computer in Rollerball deserves mention by Babel-17 · · Score: 1

    It used "fluidics" IIRC, and was prone to misplace some data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... And in Gordon Dickson's Tactics of Mistake there was an aide to a major character who served by being able to recall data he'd memorized. Arguably no big deal but it is a SF novel that dealt with people with exceptional abilities. If we're going to mention mentats (who were more about interpreting data) then I guess we can mention this guy.

    1. Re:The computer in Rollerball deserves mention by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Fahrenheit 451

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      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  16. Blade Runner 2049 by kriston · · Score: 1

    Speaking of fictional data storage, I want to know more about the crystal storage and the data blackout that happened years before the story being told in in Blade Runner 2049.

    --

    Kriston

    1. Re:Blade Runner 2049 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you see all of the prequel "shorts" for 2049? IIRC one of them had more detail on the blackout. You also have to pay close attention to the movie as the details are there, but fleeting. I think the blackout lasted for a week, and was 20 years before 2049. Never found any details on why it occurred.

  17. Mommy lied to you by Brett+Buck · · Score: 1

    Hate to break the news, but you aren't particularly special. Every generation from 10000 BC to today thinks that they are special, somehow on the brink of either disaster or transcendence, that their position is somehow unique in history.

        Well, you aren't and we aren't. There is nothing particularly special about these times, any more than it was in Roman times, Greek times, the Renaissance, or any other time. The things you think are special crises are not special at all, the things that point to some elevation of the human condition are entirely in your mind.

          The world and the human race have been bumbling along for about 4.8 billion years and 20,000 years respectively, they will still be bumbling around 10,000 years from now.

     

    1. Re:Mommy lied to you by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      I had a note from the future of about 80 years from now. It read:

      "Can you believe those idiots long ago, who hated landfills? What a boon of resources they are for us to open and sort with our robots!"

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:Mommy lied to you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not worried about the world and the human race so much as I am all the other life on it. I have a feeling that humans are more resilient than cockroaches, and the world (as in a ball of rock with some mineral resources) isn't going anywhere.

      It's just going to be a joyless desert and everything that made it good will be gone.

      I've been observing the ecological collapse throughout my life and the next 40 years leave me with little hope.

  18. Schlock Mercenary by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    The eponymous Schlock is from a race of carbosilicate life forms descendant from data storage devices. Apparently the idea was that organic memory could repair itself and regenerate as necessary. That it could evolve into a self-aware life form was apparently a side-effect.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  19. The little cards used in Star Trek by Spock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I remember the little cards plugged into the console by Spock. It was interesting to think that you could get so much information into a little thing like that. When I bought my TRS-80 model 1 they came out with the "Stringy Floppy" a few millimeter wide continuous tape (showing my age, it worked like a 8 track). To the untrained eye it looked like a Star Trek storage wafer - sure beat the hell out of cassette tapes.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exatron_Stringy_Floppy
    https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Data_card

    1. Re:The little cards used in Star Trek by Spock by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 1

      USB cards back in the 1960s. Though it looks more like compact flash...

    2. Re:The little cards used in Star Trek by Spock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On the show, they referred to them as "tapes"!

  20. What about by alzoron · · Score: 1

    all the science fiction that thinks that every time someone copies a file it somehow magically disappears completely from the source computer and all backups. A lot of the time it seems like the people writing think that computer files are like paper files and things like backups don't exist.

    1. Re:What about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't they do that in "Hackers," where Plague wants the floppy disk from Dade that contains his worm code? So he skateboards past and grabs it out of his hand. :D

  21. I love the comparition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...with 21-century (why 21-century storage is superior) and cloud storage.
    The author just have no fucking idea that cloud storage just runs on normal ssdâ(TM)s in normal datacentres.

  22. Plot centric by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The storage medium and its capacities are whatever is convenient for the plot.

  23. Storage in Trek by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Storage played a key supporting role in ST:TNG "11001001".

    https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/11001001_(episode)