When did I miss this for consumers? I remember when I was in high school and a kid down the street got a 1GB drive and I was like, "Dude, why the hell would you even NEED that much space?" And now we have 1TB drives.

I feel like my grandpa: "When I was a kid, we didn't need no stinkin' 1TB drives... no, we did just fine on 500MB drives... you kids these days have it made.........

Up hill... both ways.... in the snow...."

So, here's a theoretical question: what do you think the maximum storage capacity is for these materials? And when we stop using magnetic storage, what's next, and what are their limits?

~String

Next is "solid state drives" that use chips like in usb flash drives. Cost is the only thing that's prohibitive right now.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13163

I know the "old man" feeling..back in the day, I thought I was king of the world with a 5 Mb external hard drive on my apple lisa...check out that humongous thing sitting on top.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Apple_Lisa.jpg

When did I miss this for consumers? I remember when I was in high school and a kid down the street got a 1GB drive and I was like, "Dude, why the hell would you even NEED that much space?" And now we have 1TB drives.

~String

Do you work for Microsoft by chance?

I could find a use for a hexabyte drive...right now.

a small sd card holds 8 gigs

http://www.mrgadget.com.au/catalog/images/sandisk_sdhc_8gb_sd_card.gif

This thread has got me thinking. Does anyone know this or can guess?

How many Mb or Gb worth of information would it take to reproduce the computised version of what I can see right now? So how many mb's of information in the average snapshot of someones visual range? Just one frame?

This thread has got me thinking. Does anyone know this or can guess?

How many Mb or Gb worth of information would it take to reproduce the computised version of what I can see right now? So how many mb's of information in the average snapshot of someones visual range? Just one frame?

.3 mb? the weight of .jpg file these days

OOps I forgot to mention the important bit. The quality must be the same quality that my eyes can generate.

Good question alex...I wonder what the native resolution of my eyes are?

Good question alex...I wonder what the native resolution of my eyes are?

Also, what is the total storage space needed to contain every memory, depth, experience (conscious and otherwise), and emotion that my brain holds. How many TB's?

~String

Good question alex...I wonder what the native resolution of my eyes are?That's an interesting question. I would be curious about mine. The problem is, it's analog input, and there aren't "pixels" per se, because it's more or less continuous. Plus, it can vary depending on circumstances (how dry the eyes are, etc). Plus, it goes through so much processing by the time it gets to the level of conscious perception. If I knew more about optics and resolving power I might try to get a rough calculation.

Actually all you would have to do is mark off tiny dots on a paper and keep your eyes a fixed distance away and see how many arcminutes of separation you can distinguish. Then compare that the distance you have to be to distinguish individual pixels at a certain resolution. I might do an experiment one of these days.

Also, what is the total storage space needed to contain every memory, depth, experience (conscious and otherwise), and emotion that my brain holds. How many TB's?I do remember reading an article about that once. The author went through the calculations and ended up with the total number of CD's you would need to store all your memories. I can't remember where I read it. Then he compared that to things like the source code for Windows and other "benchmarks". And of course it was all estimations - there's no way to really know, but it was interesting nonetheless. I'll try to find it again.

When did I miss this for consumers? I remember when I was in high school and a kid down the street got a 1GB drive and I was like, "Dude, why the hell would you even NEED that much space?" And now we have 1TB drives.My first "huge" hard drive was 32 MB. At that time, someone I know said they had over a hundred megabytes, and I thought they were joking, it seemed like so much. Then a few years later I got a 2GB drive and I thought there was no way I would ever fill it. A few years after that I got a 120GB drive and I thought there was ABSOLUTELY no way I could fill it. Then I had to buy another 120, and a 250, and that soon filled up. Just a few weeks ago I bought myself a 750GB that was on sale, and I realize it will probably be filled in the not-so-distant future.

It's amazing how fast storage space expanded. And RAM too. I remember having only a few megabytes and now I have 4 GB.

Also, what is the total storage space needed to contain every memory, depth, experience (conscious and otherwise), and emotion that my brain holds. How many TB's?

~String

I think you would surprised how low the figure would be. Memory's are highly filtered even before storage and we also reconstruct memory's from a very basic skeleton format. So many of our memory are made up on the spot to a large degree.

Hmmm... on-the-fly compression and decompression.

I would say not too far into the future there will be memory cards with all the songs and all the movies ever made and you can probably buy them on the street for $50....

This thread has got me thinking. Does anyone know this or can guess?

How many Mb or Gb worth of information would it take to reproduce the computised version of what I can see right now? So how many mb's of information in the average snapshot of someones visual range? Just one frame?

Thats interesting. I would say that it would be a few GBs of data, its pretty amazing when you think about it as a single frame. And it is also dependent on objects in field of view. The more objects the more data and also lighting because shading will be a factor.

There are 1TB drive out already, are you sure it's not 2 500gb drives? just checked its 1TB.

I feel like my grandpa: "When I was a kid, we didn't need no stinkin' 1TB drives... no, we did just fine on 500MB drives... you kids these days have it made......... Up hill... both ways.... in the snow...."The first mainframe I worked on in 1967 had 64KB of main memory. When I was a kid there were fewer than a hundred computers and they all used vacuum tubes.

BTW, I Googled Tom Watson's "famous" prediction which ludicrously underestimated the total eventual market for computers, and it turns out he never said that.I wonder what the native resolution of my eyes are?As a subsequent post points out, it's hard to compare analog resolution to digital. I'm older than most of you and wear trifocals, but for what it's worth my laptop screen from three feet away (seeing it through the middle-range lenses) is indistinguishable from a photograph.Also, what is the total storage space needed to contain every memory, depth, experience (conscious and otherwise), and emotion that my brain holds. How many TB's?You can Google the number of neurons in your brain. I realize that's analog processing rather than digital, but it will give you a number to work with, especially since we don't use them all.I would say not too far into the future there will be memory cards with all the songs and all the movies ever made and you can probably buy them on the street for $50....Wow, that's going to be cause for another "writers' strike." :)

The first mainframe I worked on in 1967 had 64KB of main memory. When I was a kid there were fewer than a hundred computers and they all used vacuum tubes.

BTW, I Googled Tom Watson's "famous" prediction which ludicrously underestimated the total eventual market for computers, and it turns out he never said that.As a subsequent post points out, it's hard to compare analog resolution to digital. I'm older than most of you and wear trifocals, but for what it's worth my laptop screen from three feet away (seeing it through the middle-range lenses) is indistinguishable from a photograph.You can Google the number of neurons in your brain. I realize that's analog processing rather than digital, but it will give you a number to work with, especially since we don't use them all.Wow, that's going to be cause for another "writers' strike." :)


You just brought a tear to my eye. The first machine I programmed was an IBM 650, in hand-optimized machine code. Those were the days when a drumful of memory was enough to keep anybody happy and magnetic tape decks, if I remember correctly, generated as much heat as a one-bar electric fire. The mainframe had built-in cooling fans.

Anyone remember flip flops ?

The major big deal is going to be computers without moving parts. Now that a small memory can hold 8 Giga data easily, we can put the operating system on a memorystick, instead of a HD, and there you go.....

I remember my family's first computer, a 486 DX which we maxed with 24 mb of RAM, ahh, the good ol' days...

It's strange, I'm 21, and feel like I'm going to have the opprtunity to watch a dramatic expansion of computing ability (and all other affected technologies) from my very young memories of some of the first home computers to god knows what we'll have several decades from now. It's exciting!

Pardon that nerdgasm :D