Thursday, December 27, 2007

Immortality for 30 cents

If a gigabyte of hard disk storage costs $100, then you have to manage what you save and what you decide to record in digital form. Now if this cost keeps falling every year, what does it mean if a gigabyte of storage costs nothing? On the Internet a gigabyte of storage is free, I can get it free from Google or Yahoo! just by signing up for an account. If I insist on having that disk drive in my own home, then I can get a gigabyte for about 30 cents.

  • Would you pay 30 cents to be able to keep your worst digital photos forever?
  • Would you pay 30 cents to eliminate the job of cleaning up your hard drive?
  • Would you pay 30 cents so that your email and your voice mail never hit their max capacity?
  • Would you pay 30 cents to store the medical records of 1,000 people in Africa who do not have 30 cents to store their own medical data?
  • Would you pay 30 cents to store your most valuable memories in a Digital Library of Congress forever?
  • Would you pay 30 cents to store a survey of your home for insurance claims?
  • Is there anything so trivial that you would refuse to pay 30 cents to save it?
  • How would you answer these questions when 30 cents drops to 1 cent?

Have you stopped to think about what all of this means to the future of information, commerce, personal memories, ... everything?

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