Ah, the arrogance of youth. Of course the NSA doesn't anticipate storing a yottabyte <i>now</i>. But facilities of this size are intended to have an operational lifespan measures in decades. In the ~30 years since I got my first computer my available local storage has grown from kilobytes to terabytes. I sometimes work on petabyte-scale projects now and I can conceive of exabyte applications easily (google is rumored to be in that league already). I feel pretty confident that $250 will buy you a petabyte of storage for your desk by 2025.<p>So having seen a billionfold increase in what I can affordably hang off my personal computer, I'm not willing to rule out another one over the same timeframe.
<a href="http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2269172/pg1#38573023" rel="nofollow">http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2269172/pg1#...</a><p>A little known fact...<p>YEARS ago, the electronics company "Phillips" who invented the CD made a prototype of a new format that used "wave division multiplexing".<p>In short a full-spectrum laser (not red or blue or green) with 16.8 million colours was used, that could read data from a disc, using multi layers read via every "colour".<p>So in essence it would turn a 9GB disc into a 9 x 16.8 million GB disc.<p>Or 15200000 GB disc.<p>The Technology was shown working to trade insiders (myself being one of them) and then....<p>It just disappeared, never to be heard of again..<p>Some colleagues speculated that Government or Military wanted the tech and approached Phillips.<p>Not for the consumer market.<p>This was back in 1995.