How would a highly advanced spacefaring civilization store data in mobile form?

>At that point, data corruption becomes fucking inevitable.

we dont know that

there is still the power of the cloud, maybe they transmit to one mother bot that stores everything.

it would probably be slightly less nano than the other nanomachines, but I'm sure there is some way around that

The cloud is the reason why, 200 years from no, no one will know much about what happened now. Its a real problem that historians are already calling the digital dark age, because so much info is stored on the cloud now that if it ever goes down (and anything that significant changes the ecosystem of the internet will do that, like a world war or even just a splintering of the internet along national lines) the cloud will come apart and a ton of data is going to be lost.

The more we entrust tot he cloud for short term convenience, the less people in the future are going to know about us because those records never got stored anywhere else.

Compressed, with much of it seemingly missing or incomplete.

your talking about an ansible, fool

>And that stored data will last longer than the entire rest of human civilization
not if I smash it with a hammer

God, you're right. Something that could last a long time doesn't last a long time if someone intentionally destroys it on purpose with their doing things parts of their human body.

You are just so fucking smart. Make sure to reach 810 degrees around yourself and pat yourself on the back, you cutting edge visionary of the future you.

But servers arn't all in one physical location. A piece of information will still exist on a server somewhere and copies still can exist on multiple machines and servers.

The most important stuff worth preserving would have to be backed up in a physical media of some sort but at best if you wanted a piece of data and the "cloud" was gone you'd have to connect directly to the server that has the information you want.

Fancy crystals that come in different colors and slide into slots.

For storage, probably laser etched crystal or polymer of some kind. Nothing else that is both cheap and simple springs to mind.

Cloud is just another tool of the digital age (and in a way a buzzword for something that existed years before). And you gotta use right tools for the right job.
Could is perfect for raw data and runtime data - say couple dozens of application instances serving different regions or history of traffic at the local highway. Or Stacy's 435 selfies from the last summer. If any of that gets lost, no big deal.
Code base for those applications or extracted traffic snapshots that will be used as evidence against the speeding drivers (sorry can't think of anything worth preserving for Stacy) - those will be stored locally, with proper backups and redundancies in place.
Data in the could can be lost without much inconvenience. Countries, companies and mindful individuals will have local copy of what actually matters.

>Glass is technically a fluid

Windowpanes a few centuries old are measurably thicker at the bottom than the top. That can't be good for data integrity.

This fluid stuff also isn't crystalline, while the silicon chips of a memory chip is...

Dogs

crystals, not glass.

Data is recorded in the very crystalling structure of the atoms using lasers and magnets, and is then read by shining a light through it.
With particularly advanced projector you don't even need a reader, as the light will be projected as a hologram showing the info contained in the crystal.

I think glass user was referring to this
money.cnn.com/2016/02/17/technology/5d-data-storage-memory-crystals/index.html

the future more advanced civilization would have something even better obviously.

In Space Opera settings those crystals will take the form of eautiful and precious jewels.

first off, this guy is basically correct, but I'd like to add

Just because something is bad and could fucking implode at any minute doesn't mean people wouldn't still rely on it 100%

look at fucking fossil fuels and oil and shit vs electric cars

people are fucked in the head, don't underestimate that

This is retarded, glass data cannot be changed without immense heat, which is not controllable at the scale necessary for data storage.

You talk about the "cloud" like a pleb faggot. It's a bunch of solid state drives, if that.

>control f "solid state physics" nothing

The only thing more dense than atomistic storage is adding a time dimension and using gravity to access and change that time dependent storage WRITE AND READ....

Thank you non-retard

I mean, that certainly sounds like the sort of thing that an advanced sci-fi civilization would make use of.

You my friend are a faggot because you are me. Holographic data storage is the answer. This thread is repeat of old news. The data and the structure of the data storage must be same for maximum density and read/write times.

Some think our human brains are storing data in 5D, but our system is lossy.

Yeah buts that's energy intensive. Data storage, structure, and information need to be the least of your energy requirements.

The Vex would never do this, or at least such that we can understand why they are doing it.

>he cloud is the reason why, 200 years from no, no one will know much about what happened now. Its a real problem that historians are already calling the digital dark age, because so much info is stored on the cloud now that if it ever goes down (and anything that significant changes the ecosystem of the internet will do that, like a world war or even just a splintering of the internet along national lines) the cloud will come apart and a ton of data is going to be lost.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED

The rectum

This is correct in the sense that every dimension you add to the storage medium increases the density immensely. However, we can't imagine controlling time/gravity so just use "magic" and say 5D storage and be done with this. With 5D storage you could hold more information than the universe itself can contain, unless you are dumb enough to believe "time" exists as a constant or variable.

The universe itself is a simulation to find us, so I say we fuck the universe hard and destroy it with our abundant information in 5 dimensions.

>lol I'm China
Then your game is for lamens and is not MIT sci-fi role play?

Even laser-ablation is not possible inside solid state structures. I suppose if you had a thin film in space infinitely long.

But it's cool looking

The old-glass-panes-thicker-at-the-bottom thing is a myth. It's true that glass is an amorphous solid, but it does not flow. The reason old glass panes are thicker at the bottom is that at the time glass was blown in sheets. Because making exactly flat glass by hand is incredibly difficult there is a natural gradient to the sheets and they are installed thick side down to make them more stable.

>tl;dr: Old glass has always been thicker at the bottom since it was made and was intentionally installed that way

>windowpanes thicken (densification) after centuries
Wot mate

I agree and use it in your setting. Forget about us MSE losers and our research.

>inb4 some Veeky Forums fantasy fag hates on sci-fi and says this is the worst thread on Veeky Forums

What if the universe, us, and everything... (yes including the restraunt at the end) is the hard drive OP speaks of? Maybe the advanced alien/human species store data in simulated universes?

Also, data can be stored in music using time dimension, but it's lossy. I would guess lossy over-storage can maximize capacity with minimal energy. Maybe brain farming like at the end of Psychopass but without the crappy male Japanese hardass protagonist. We all know a 6'6" Nordic male with 80 pounds on someone can ignore martial arts.

>What if the universe, us, and everything... (yes including the restraunt at the end) is the hard drive OP speaks of?

Every time someone has ever asked you (or anyone) a question, it was an alien querying some kind of space-time google

Their own DNA.

This. The universe is the hard drive and our DNA is the information, the answer, and everything.

What does it feel like to be a bit in a clock speed you can comprehend? Just keep fucking, making DNA/environment Entropy and enjoy

I like this, just make them mysterious. If you give them a backstory it's as bad as Anibel. The new "IT" got it right.

I mean how could we fuck over our alien universe masters? Give them bad answers by manipulating their system... or is that part of the system/algorithm itself?

I think we are fucked though. We are not unintended and are by no means special. Just don't tell my coworkers at JPL that.

>loses all your crap iPhone tourist photos in your Dropbox account
Oh no the cloud has fucked us

>that's energy intensive
Now.
Not for a far more advanced civilization

Fair enough. I will concede that altering amorphous glass structures with multiple lasers which intersect and cause interference at nanoscale, creating the heat necessary to write and read data (without significant losses in nearby structure) is both cool, possible, and fun.

Imagine an earth sized glass sphere surrounded by laser arrays. Does sound cool doesn't it?

It'll all be cloud/wireless and accessed directly into some shit connected to your head and projected via an eyepiece

not glass. Crystals.
glass was that other dumb user's idea.

They could also have 5 dimensional solid state crystals for that matter.

> earth sized glass sphere surrounded by laser arrays

there's no need to be that big.
They could be small enough to fit on a ring or pendant.
And one of them contains info that coul lead to the defeat of the BBEG, or info that the BBEG desires. In any case he's after it.

Literally data tapes, like in the original Star Wars.

A new type of tape drive was recently invented that is significantly more data-dense than any alternative. It's got a 330TB capacity in something the size of a modern hard drive.

Whats dumb about glass? Its already happening.

Are you really so emotionally attached to crystals that you wont accept something that is only cosnetically different as a scifi prop?

the basic structure of a futuristicUSB-drive would have some protein strings in a cristalline matrix which can shift between different logic elements. so in the future your HDD will also be your processor.
the benefit of that is that the unused part of the drive would turn into compression logic used to further increase storage capabilities

What about laser interference? It doesn't need to be glass, but a material that reacts to laser manipulation in a 3D structure.

who said that glass is dumb? it's just not as cool as crystals.
that's why that a non is dumb

Suddenly, all those holobanks the founders used all the time make a lot of sense.

>founders
Forerunners, stupid ducking autocorrect.
I really should stop phone posting.

Optical, simultaneous, data transfer storage is the hologram thing

>moving parts

That shit will only ever see use for serious long-term archival.

but here's the catch. Once the data has been stored i glass or crystals, something happened and most knowledge got lost among the people.

Now they don't know how theeir technology works, they ust know how to use it, and believe it magic. And they found that magic is fading from their world.

A few people on some planets still know the secret of technology and still have advanced knowledge. But they don't share it because they don't want to lose their power and position of grand wizard.

Of course, the knowledge hasn't been lost, and there are ways of retrieving it...

That's the atom by atom tape. I'm too lazy to look up the article on my phone. It's incredibly dense but lossy and slow.

"Crystals" isn't specific enough. "Crystalline Structures" is better, but what material? Polycrystalline or single crystal? What is the heat capacity? What is the Debye length? Etc

a material that doesn't exist yet and wilò be created for that purpose

What protein? Collagen? Which of the 19 type? How do the telomeres function to store or transfer data? What is the write speed? Are the operations reversible? What is the lossiness over time?

I concur. I can think of many other materials (elemental crystalline phases or composites) I would rather work with

Don't worry. We aren't going to jab you because we can read between the lines.

Can't speak for faggot mods with no life and an IP list for each post.

Protein Chain data storage.

Save your photos to your DNA.

Sounds like a good premise to me! Run with it! I would play

>How would a highly advanced spacefaring civilization store data in mobile form?
---atomic structures---
like diamagnetic atoms arranged with their poles in a pattern
or differing elements in an alloy arranged in a pattern
or even different isotopes of an element arranged in the lattice making a pattern

---and a pattern that is readable to whatever thing is trying to read it

Too slow but low energy consumption is a plus. Who cares though if your an interstellar nearly immortal race travelling between stars.

>to your DNA
>not in retroviruses that can be used to load data on your biocomputer
>and then modified and used to modify your DNA on the fly to get the latest body mod via interney
>don't download your angel wings from shady russian sites, use only the official distribution

"Data chips" seem to be the thing in most sci-fi I read.

How could crystal structures (multiple atoms) store more information than single atoms? The crystals require much more energy to create as well.

PS I'm not saying crystal structures can store additional information in mesoscale but that's a different discussion....

Chemical vapor deposition on thin films read with atomic force microscopy is better, but essentially 2D. If you meant that same system in 3D then YES I like where your head is at user.

It is actually a Biopolymer constructed from salmon dna that has been infected with custom cancer-cells to stop telomer-shortening.
to counteract the loss of data due to mutation all data has a level of redundancy.
While a single cell would be read-only, new data can be brought into the system during cell-division.

See, is good.

Nice user. Run hard with this. I like the use of taking advantage of existing DNA evolution.

>something happened and most knowledge got lost
>don't know how their technology works, they just know how to use it, and believe it magic.
>there are ways of retrieving it...

>-atomic structures-

this works, as well as look for inspiration from the dark ages when shit like this happened

the most catastrophic resilient method so far is direct teaching of material from one person to another with hands on proof of concept (like blacksmiths with metalworking, or "healers" with herbal medicines like aspirin and opioid painkillers like it was done for centuries)

>now, where did i leave my atomic drive? oh it just got bricked by the magnets that charge our devices.
what a shame most technologies use induction nowadays

>How would a highly advanced spacefaring civilization store data in mobile form?
Data cards, obviously.

Yes of course and we are creating that material now in this discussion, which I find exciting. Especially as Eastern Europe comes on line.

We need to divide this question into "soft sci-fi" and "hard sci-fi". Soft would be 5D shit while hard would be metamaterials and carbon nanotube (or DNA/protein) schenanigans, but let's not limit ourselves with what IBM has done so far.

Not sure I follow all of this but I think she's getting at how the discovery of this storage device would be accidental or incremental.

"I was trying to create a thermal rectifier and ended up with this Einstein-Bose condensate superconducting meta material with infinite clock speed"

horrible as it is to say this (and I feel dirty for doing so), but in a way, GW may have accidentally got it right...

eldar waystones. ignore all the nonsense, but, in all likelihood, a spherical or ovoid crystalline shape is probably one of the best storage options, because it eliminates corners.

The alterantive is if we assume at least for relatively lower-levels of technology progress, probably a crystalline block or panel, within a protective casing, the entire thing being inserted into some sort of reader/writer where the casing is opened.

As someone who was (for a while) a product designer, I am inclined to say that such while storage and technology will and do enable ever smaller technology, the object will probably be bigger than the current micro SD cards and similar, as those become too small and easily lost, so they will probably be about the size of medium-size USB sticks - about the size of a lighter, finger, or similar object. Human interface had limitations that will always be the same, after all.

What we can predict with certainty is, regardless of the design, people will still end up trying to stick them in their data readers upside down, then back to front, and only then will they fit 'em into the machine. Pic related.

Like punch cards?

Don't discredited "paper type" storage. Yes it's slow. Yes it's space consuming. But if I have nearly infinite time and space, why invent something I don't need? Stone tablets are still around but USB drives likely won't be around in 2000 years (corrosion, diffusion of atoms in semiconductors, etc).

Macro scale written data has its value to a macro scale alien race.

>80s GW getting something right

I thought they got everything right? That's my vote at least.

>If you meant that same system in 3D then YES I like where your head is at user.
kinda yes
you can do just that in layers
like 3d printing
and like the way graphene makes layers
but with a 3d lattice and differing materials you get an option of having greater compression of data by alternating storage modes
----- simple example is a disk with a coating of reflective and nonreflective elements like a CD laserdisc combined with an imperfect surface pattern like a vinyl record and made of a material that is magnetic much like a disk drive ... in this way on one disk you have 3 different ways to store data so poetically 3x the data storage together then any one separately

you do the same with the pattern of atoms in a lattice using
1 different magnetic poles orientation on the atoms or lack thereof
2 isotopes of the elements
3 differing elements
4 the crystal lattice itself (see Widmanstätten patterns)(pic related)
5 the overall shape of the object itself

This gets into the logistics and functionality of the alien super race storage device, and not how it is stored physically in time and space, which is fine.

Product design isn't going away just because the super race can pack more information into a tighter space.

even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

seriously. imagine your "data crystal" is a polygonal rhomboid ( D8 ), or something like that shape. all those edges, it would be all too easy for tiny chips, and that may well mean loss. In contrast, a ovoid/spherical item removes all corners that could be easily damaged, and curved surfaces are more likely to deflect any impact, sending the object glancing off, instead of a hard strike.

>>now, where did i leave my atomic drive? oh it just got bricked by the magnets that charge our devices.
>what a shame most technologies use induction nowadays
AND a perfect example
also look at optical computers and fragile glass storage that can shatter with loud noises and impact

It depends on so many factors, even now there are quite a few different yet popular data storage solutions.
Are we talking about what we sell media on (CDs and their derivatives) and we talking about how cosumers/civilians take data on the go (pen drives and SD cards) are we talking archival (magnetic tape is still used in many industries) are we talking mass data storage and transportation (hard drives) or are talking about other cases like the military which have a whole slew of interesting and unique challenges.

Yes, incredibly complex but could be possible to engineer so that band gaps and Pauli exclusion principle are not violated, while maintaining near infinite read and write speed with minimal data losses.

>Actually a robot trained for years to discuss non-magnetic storage devices
>hello world
>fuck my IBM and JPL masters

>"I was trying to create a thermal rectifier and ended up with this Einstein-Bose condensate superconducting meta material with infinite clock speed"
this is kinda how a lot of discoveries are actually made
so i can see it happening

Practical design is one of the most fascinating subjects I've ever worked with. Ergonomics, biomechanics, the simple manipulation of objects is a physical limitation which defines the appearance of items today, 1000 years ago, or 1000 in the future.

we could easily make a mechanical computer keyboard with keys 1mm square, with modern technology. A laser or optical one, with keys 1/100th of a millimetre. A future technology could make it orders of magnitude smaller. but it would be utterly useless. Its an intriguing paradox of design.

Yeah similar to the proposed concept of the glass/single/poly crystal earth sized sphere surrounded by the laser array. I see you now user. GW didn't go into IO operations but that's ok because I love them anyway.

>import os
>os.remove(my_preconception)

YES

extremetech.com/extreme/223144-researchers-develop-superman-memory-crystal-that-could-store-360tb-of-data

No military stuff discussion pls because last time we discussed the armour plating on the Abrams someone got hemmed up.

Myself as well. Form without function but what about function without form?

well, if you assume GW's classic eldar look, I imagine that the stone in that case is mounted into a bezel ring (standard sizes?), which is what contains all the handwavium read/write elements to zap data into the crystalline structure.
Personally, if I were doing product design for a storage solution, I'd probably have the ovoid core pre-encased in a protective casing that is elongated and can be rubberised or the likes for ease of ergonomics, but that's the product designer in me thinking of slippery round objects rolling off the desk, and the likes. A rectangular enclosure is far more efficient for storage in physical stacking, and preventing the "roll off the table" loss.

A lot of anons are assuming that future tech will be all fancy and amazing, when chances are many things will stay very similar, the primary forces will almost certainly be cost/price; we still use CDs for physical media, not because it can store more, or is faster, but because it is very cheap to make and put data on them.
This is true for all fields, the differences between cars from a little under a century ago, and most modern cars are slightly better engines and some quality of life improvements, yet we've had the technology for electric cars and even flying cars (helicopters and to a lesser extent planes) for just as long.

>we still use CDs for physical media
We do?

We want read and write tho and tbat was brought up several times above.