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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1999 Don't miss the next trick HOW many times have you watched TV, listened to a radio concert or other music and wished you had recorded the programme? How many times have you wished you had your still or video camera with you, or at least out of the bag, ready with film loaded and batteries charged? It always seems to be my lot to just miss those important events, and I long for a technology that will allow me to backtrack in time and space to capture everything retrospectively. Well, it seems technology will soon be offering me this facility by default, rather than by any conscious decision or design. Digital TV, radio and everything else are coming fast, and all complete with individual hard drives. Within a decade we can look also forward to technologies that will record absolutely everything we see, hear, and view. We will just let the excess bits spill off the end of the disc unless we take action to store a specific slice. Still and video cameras we can wear on our spectacles are available now, but principally from specialist stores. They are very expensive, but, as with everything electronic, they will soon drop to some affordable level. So I may soon choose to miss nothing, and I will always be prepared, alert, and with total recall. I will be able to record programmes, and catch those magic moments on camera by just being there, provided my devices are switched on. Imagine the impact on vacations, news gathering, accident inquiries, sporting events, security - someone somewhere will always have a view on record. The only impediment is high-density storage. We still depend on spinning discs to store our gigabytes of information, and the sound of a disc whirring in the living room presents an engineering challenge. However, even with this technology the latest leading-edge devices are extremely quiet and store 340Mb within a 2.5x2.5x0.3cm form factor. Of course, the ideal would be totally solid state memories of even smaller size, greater storage density and less power consumption. Well, those are coming too, but are probably about a decade away. Fundamentally, this is not a technology limitation, but a cost problem - the fabrication processes are just far too expensive right now. The really interesting features of this technology migration are going to be social. It will change our habits in front of and away from the box, in our homes, offices, and abroad. My guess is we will accept the upside of this opportunity at the cost of losing some privacy because, as ever, the benefits of the technology will be so great. After all, we all stand a chance of being the cameraman at the scene of some accident, tragedy, or major sporting or social event. We will be able to sell our experience direct to agencies, broadcasters, webcasters, or through our own home pages. Today we have cameras in stores, public buildings, schools, offices, car parks, in the street, on our roads, in police vehicles, and satellites. There are now so many cameras installed they have become an invisible and accepted part of the infrastructure - like overhead power lines and lamp posts. When cameras become part of our everyday apparel I just want a little red LED that says: "Here I am and you are on the record." Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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