Cringely likes to make big statements, things that seem obvious to him or his sources, and his latest column, Seeing Is Believing, is no different. In it, he calculates the huge amount of storage and energy that would be required to move to a GoogleOS-like world. Sadly, the essay commits the same type of error he so often makes: forgetting that technology doesn’t stand still. So I sent him a polite email on it, hopeful I’m not a bit too full of hubris:
Two problems with your analysis:
- Disks get bigger every year or so, maybe not faster but consuming the same or less power, and when the holographic storage devices come online in the next few years the density will go through the roof.
- Local storage is becoming a very possible technique through work done by people like Brad Neuberg. So possibly providers will be able to at least cache most likely to be accessed material on the user’s PC and avoid having to keep everything in immediate access speed network storage. Alternatively to this, people may use (or be given/sold cheaply and told to use) USB storage devices, particularly after holographic storage has gone through one or two generations of learning curve price reduction, with providers used mainly for backup.
Either or both of these near term changes pretty much reduces the problem you wrote about substantially. Since you’re well-informed and connected, one wonders why you didn’t address or include these points.
BillSaysThis 