Magnetic and optical media is dirt cheap nowadays–yet almost nobody backs up. Makes me think that the user, not the computer, is the limiting factor!

Incidentally, all the storage in the universe won’t do us any good as long as the bottleneck in computing is disk access. Not even a top-of-the line disk array can supply data fast enough for a modern processor.

For the record, I have no evidence that IBM is planning on harvesting the electrons from customers (or competitors) to builds quantum storage devices.

This much is sure: we’re moving to high definition in television, DVD, cable and broadcast. There are an increasing number of digitalization projection around the world to encode large libraries of texts. Our ability (and willingness) to place security cameras in public places is increasing.

So, there is no doubt that we’re going to see a rapid increase in storage demand. But I don’t see what mechanism would lead to sustained exponential growth. Maybe a 100x increase. But then what? Certainly an engineering breakthrough like a storage device that uses quantum entanglement would enable a vastly greater level of storage. But I don’t see how that level of storage capacity would lead to a proportionate growth in information supply.

Think of it this way: CPU cycles are more plentiful and cheaper. We’re moving to dual-core on the client. Multi-core will increase in computational power. But the average client machine spends most of its time idle as we read pages or type. CPU cycles are so cheap that Microsoft is able to use them for all sorts of dynamic UI embellishments that would have been considered a frivolous waste of resources a few years ago.

So the question is this: If storage were infinite and free, what would you do with it? What applications does it enable that we do not have today? Maybe I’d actually back up my photos. Or bolder, maybe I’d backup and carry around the entire internet on a quantum USB drive and carry it with me everywhere. With sufficient storage, bandwidth is irrelevant. At least until you need to update the data.

I wouldn’t want IBM storage services to try build a storage in the the electrons of my body…

But it seems that all data we would store would come from Man or the machines that Man builds. So we are may be more limited on the production side than the storage side. How many bits can we produce given the sources of energy availanble to us?