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February 20, 2006
Paper for digital storage
Today I went to see my doctor to finish off the high blood pressure question. He looked at the results from a couple of weeks ago when I wore the portable blood pressure measurement device all night, and spent a little more time than the cardiologist saying the high readings appear to have been a fluke. Today he said my blood pressure was douze sept. I guess he meant 12.7 over something not worth mentioning. Either that or he mean 12/7, which is 120/70. Neither reading is cause for alarm.
The interesting part of the visit came when he confused me, or at least my job, with another American he treats. This other guy apparently is moving to China to work on productizing the use of paper for digital storage. He wasn't talking about punched tape, but instead storing digital information in paper fibers. Presumably we have better preservation technology for paper than we do for magnetic or optical media. Perhaps we now have techniques for cramming lots more onto paper.
I recall reading something this, but cannot recall where, nor what would bring it back up. Google's not helping.
Posted by Mark at February 20, 2006 06:05 PM
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Comments
I'm pretty sure "douze sept" means 120/70, unless he comes from Quebec or Belgium, and then all bets are off because they count fuuny.
Presumably, paper is cheaper than magnetic storage, but the cost of yet another media reader seems like it would negate any savings. Plus, paper is fragile so it would be a single use recording. I can't think of many applications for that, advertizing maybe.
Posted by: Andy at February 21, 2006 08:49 AM
If paper is much cheaper per volume of data, it could replace optical media, like CDs or DVDs perhaps. I don't know what the applications are. Have you heard anything about using paper for storage of digital information?
Posted by: Mark at February 21, 2006 04:43 PM
No, the only thing I saw recently was about the anachronism of putting a 3-min MP3 on 40,000 punchcards (and needing to read 205 per second--not to mention jogging with your iCard) [which got me surfing and thereby found this gem:
"Modern high-volume Jacquard looms use metal [punch] cards!" (http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/history.html)--I guess they can claim that durability of their punch cards has followed Moore's "law"]
You say "if paper is much cheaper...it could replace...CDs or DVDs" and I ask how? When I try to be creative, I can imagine a piece of paper, or maybe cardstock in some shape that holds information. It's much more vulnerable to damage such as creasing, scratching (presumably), and humidity, so I don't see any savings, just more expensive storage for the same expected life of the data.
Posted by: Andy at February 22, 2006 02:44 AM