Thursday, December 07, 2006

Mommy, Where's my God Box?

A God Box is a device that holds every bit of some particular media in one place. For example, if you wanted to create a God Box of all the music ever recorded, you would need space for about 46 million songs. The Library of Congress takes about 10 terabits, and the whole Internet is about 100 terabits.

Toshiba is bringing the God Box a little closer to reality, with their 100GB hard drive that is about the size of a battery. And, as a bonus, it's RoHS compliant too. Storage prices have been falling steadily for years, but this is going to push it to the next level. Oh, and let's not forget the 10 terabyte CD that was just invented.

It's hard to say what the effects of these God Boxes will have have on the younger generation, the Abundance generation, but I think it will be both very subtle and very deep. Imagine never deleting an email, saving all of your telephone calls, recording your entire life on video. Ultimately, having all the information you will ever need right at your fingertips all the time is probably the ultimate ecofriendly thing to do.

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