The more we know, the more quickly we forget

Information plays an increasingly important role in our lives, its volume is growing, but keep it all the more difficult. What developments take place in this area? Scientists suggest that? Miracles are possible here? You can make immortal medium which permanently store the recorded data to it?
Stone, vinyl, paper ...
Every age and even every year it becomes more obvious paradoxical trend: more and more information, methods of storing more diverse, but less durable. From granite and parchment mankind turned to paper and magnetic tape. Then they were replaced by electronic media: books, CDs, flash drives. However, if paper books live a few hundred years, the electronic and do not hold up to a dozen. Extruded vinyl progress, according to the music lovers, if stored properly can "live" almost forever. CD and DVD, which originally was intended for developers at least a 100-year service life, even in the most expensive and high-quality version can not withstand longer 5-10 years. More spacious and convenient USB flash drive, also designed just for 5 years, and the hard drive on which most of us keeps the most important records and data "lives" only 10 years.
On what and how to store
On the problem of long-lasting storage for a long time, scientists are struggling. The difficulty lies not only in the search for a heavy-duty material for recording the data, but also in the choice of the form of writing. To save a lot of information, it must be somehow "pack." Therefore, the reading will also require additional treatment. Use with computer software and devices greatly reduces the "shelf life", as manufacturers of special equipment to provide support only for a limited time. What's the use of stored data, if you read them in the absence of a suitable "player" is impossible. Optimal solution, which would combine the durability of the material with the ease of reading the recorded information has yet been found, but some of the options for the "eternal" records scientists have to offer.
Disc in a million
Employees of the French agency ANDRA create a disc capable of maintaining data for millions of years. Scientists have solved with a purely practical problem: warn children about the graves of nuclear waste.
"Miracle letter" consists of two thin discs industrial sapphire diameter of about 20 cm on one of the drives with engraved platinum deposited about 40,000 miniature (not digital) pages, then covered with a second disc labels and sealed. To read them, the archaeologists of the future will need only an optical microscope.
Creation of a prototype cost to researchers at 25 thousand euros. He passed all the tests, including immersion in acid. Experts believe that such a disk can store data at least 1 million years, and in the near future, hoping to prove that he was uneasy and 10 million. A prototype of the sapphire disk was shown in an open forum Euroscience Open Forum 2012, in Dublin.
True, still remain some doubts that this drive will perform the task for which it was created. First, despite its durability, the drive might just not get to children at the most banal reason - the sapphire and platinum can Pozar robbers. There is a second, more serious problem: the language is to speak to the descendants? In this matter, scientists hope to help a variety of specialists.
The universal language
Specialists Japanese company Hitachi as a universal language that timeless chose binary. It was he who used to write data to a new sverhdolgovechnom optical media, created recently by the company. "Eternal drive" from Hitachi is a plate of transparent quartz glass 2x2 cm and a thickness of 2 mm. Binary code written in four layers of laser points that are visible in ordinary light microscope. Recording density is 40 megabytes per square inch, that is placed on a plate for about 25 MB, but the commercial use of the thickness and number of layers can be easily increased.
The glass plate is not responding to any of almost reagents from the same material make tubes and other glassware. She is able to withstand temperatures up to 1000 ° C for several hours. Destroy the information can only be breaking a record, which is very easy to do, given the strength of fused silica. According to the creators, this drive is capable of storing information, "hundreds of millions of years."
True, there is no guarantee that after millions of years, there reader quartz disks, and people will be able to extract information from the binary code. So the new media is useful, rather than in the future, but today. According to experts from Hitachi, these carriers may be in demand from government agencies and museums.
Military developments
Just as relevant and "eternal" disc, presented not yet known company Millenniata supported by such an authority as LG. The new disc is called M-Disc and intended to be read in an ordinary DVD-player. According to calculations of the creators, M-Disc must remain operational even after a thousand years - and even after 10 thousand. Unknown, but again, not going to disappear by the time the DVD-players.
But dignity superdiska can estimate now. It was created in the framework announced in 2009, the tender for the development of equipment to meet the needs of the army. M-Disc successfully proved his incredible endurance in tests conducted by the military at the base of the lake Chino. 25 prototypes of three different discs were placed in a special chamber, where they were subjected to temperatures of 85 degrees Celsius with a relative humidity of 85 percent, as well as light exposure in all ranges. As a result, drives Millenniata was the only samples that have not lost any data at all. Moreover, according to the creators, the drives themselves are able to withstand short-term exposure of ultrahigh and ultralow temperatures.
The secret of this stability lies in the use of inorganic materials. During the recording, which is produced by the strong laser on the surface of the disc burned notch, and sintered polycrystalline form. Similar compounds are found in many rocks. Because of this, researchers have even named their album "stone."
Flash memory for hundreds of years
Not remain without attention and memory cards. Japanese scientists from the Institute of Modern Applied Science and Technology (AIST) and the University of Tokyo have developed a flash memory that can store the recorded information in it for hundreds of years.
Such a life is made possible by the fact that the memory is made of ferroelectric - substances whose properties vary under the influence of an external electric field. The information in a cell can be recorded 100 million times 10 thousand times more than the flash memory used today, which allows to perform only about 10 thousand write cycles. That limitation on the number of write cycles and are, by the way, the main reason for the fragility of ordinary flash drives.
For the renewal of the new flash memory technology has also been used "wear-levelling", which distributes write cycles over all cells chips evenly, preventing wear of cells to varying degrees. However, some cells may still fail earlier than others. To save the newly recorded data is still guaranteed, such cells off without disabling the entire chip.
In addition to durability, the new memory chips has other advantages - they operate at a lower voltage than those that exist today, and therefore consume three times less energy.
The future is open source
Thus, it is obvious that in the search for durable materials scientists have already achieved considerable success. Now it's up in order to "find" technology of the future: to create something as simple, reliable, and does not require major changes, such as the printing technique, which appeared in the XV century.
The rapid development of computer technology with many advantages is far and obvious drawback: the program languages, operating systems very quickly become obsolete and out of use. To read data recorded forty years ago, we need specialists with language is the time.
Part of the continuity of programs and systems is achieved through the use of open source. An open-source is much more likely to survive the century than closed, as the latter depends entirely on the company's policy-owner. To encourage buyers, Microsoft, for example, changed the format of recording and storing data in the new version of Microsoft Office, so that the owners of the old version will not be able to open documents created in the new Office, and had to buy a new version.
If the source code is open, there is no motivation deliberately stop supporting old formats. However, even if this happens, it is possible to read them, in the end, write a separate program using the old code. It is possible that Linux, Android, and other systems may be ill-suited to the new reality, but because they are open, based on them, you can create something new, processing them in any way. Each of these systems can be adapted to the new reality, using pieces of code and algorithms to read data in the old format, sorting out her insides and making it necessary for the program.