Is holographic no longer vaporware? (was: Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Thu Aug 12 14:40:23 2004

On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Stan Barr wrote:
> > BTW what happed to holographic storage anyhow?
> Work is still in progress. Shizuka University in Japan recently demoed
> a device that stores 2000 gigabytes of data in a 1cm cube of material.
> Reading and writing the data is still too slow for a practical device
> though. You could archive a *lot* of data with one!

Not necessarily doubting, but was that "stores", or "can store"?
Many years ago, I attended a presentation about a holographic
system the "could store" MANY gigabytes per cc. The phrase
"can store" was used a lot. When asked about current progress,
they were VERY evasive. After about a dozen questions, they
admitted that they had not yet achieved the multi-gigabyte
capacity. After many more questions, they finally admitted
that the current capacity was 27 bits. It is a good proof of
concept, but the differentiation between projection and
accomplishment is significant.
'course by now, they very well might have reached the
capacity goals.


Similarly there is a proponent of alternate fuel vehicles who
is constantly quoting specs that include impressive results.
He is very evasive about timeframe of availability.
But it turns out that his vehicle is NOT in production.
There isn't even a prototype! His "data" is all results
of "simulations", and many of his "can do" numbers require
a complete restructure of society. Even when explicity
challenged, he adamently refuses to acknowledge a difference
between possibilities and existence.
Received on Thu Aug 12 2004 - 14:40:23 BST