*That's unusual: a stone made of vaporware.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8172568.stm
(...)
'Future imperative'
Researchers working in Japan say they might have the breakthrough archivists are praying for - a sealed permanent memory bank that will be easily readable now and far into the next millennium.
The team, led by Professor Tadahiro Kuroda of Tokyo's Keio University, has proposed storing data on semiconductor memory-chips made of what he describes as the most stable material on the Earth - silicon.
Tightly sealed, powered and read wirelessly, such a device, he claims, would yield its digital secrets even after 1000 years, making any stored information as resilient as it were set in stone itself.
It's a realisation that moved the researchers to name the disc-like, 15in (38cm) wide device the "Digital Rosetta Stone" after the revolutionary 2,200-year-old Egyptian original unearthed by Napoleon's army.
"Archiving the mountains of digitalized cultural heritage we have amassed for the future is paramount," says Professor Kuroda.
One project - The World Digital Library (WDLP) has its sights on such a device.
WDLP aims to provide online access to significant cultural material from around the world for free.
According to Professor Kuroda the project needs a device that can last at least 1,000 years, more than a terabyte of storage and real-time accessibility.
"We believe our sealed permanent memory system, the Digital Rosetta Stone, will satisfy these demands."
Work on this silicon lifebelt is still at an experimental stage, but Professor Kuroda hopes to have something ready for practical use in ten years. (((What could go wrong?)))
So far his team has managed to read and write more digitised data onto the "stone" than found in the vast British Library collection.
The process starts by etching bits and bytes by laser onto silicon wafers, the ultrapure materials from which computer chips are made.
Crucially, the nature of these digital markings will be determined by a universal agreement on a common storage language that will hopefully last thousands of years. That is yet to come says Kuroda. (((He can dream, can't he?)))
These are stacked on top of one another to form a 10cm- (4in-)high disk, which is sealed between layers of another type of near-impregnable silicon to keep out oxygen and moisture.
According to the professor, these are the two culprits that will render seemingly durable CDs and DVDs into unreadable ornaments in the next 30 to 100 years.
There is some debate about just how long these forms of plastic disc storage can last.
But a recent study by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), which spent two years testing DVD and CD discs to evaluate their life expectancies, found that both DVD-R and CD-R could maintain data for tens of years at most.
CDs had a life expectancy of only around 15 years whilst DVDs fared even worse with a lifespan of around 10 years....
