The future of the memoir.

Humanity has always had the need to pass their memories and numerous quantities of
information from one generation to another. Until today, different kinds of tools have
allowed us to keep all the information that we considered important and/or necessary. The
average life span of an inscription on stone is 10.000 years, on parchment is 1.000 years,
on magnetic tapes is 100 years, and on vinyl is 50 years. Even though, there are new
computing technologies and a great variety of data storage devices invented since the
50's, the memory faces a vulnerability that no one had predicted before.
For the last few years, we have passed from one storage medium to another, and some of
those technologies have already disappeared. For instance, the CD-ROM, created in
1979, was sold like the disk of the future. It claimed a duration of 100 years, hence, it
quickly conquered the memory market. But in 2003, the researchers of the French
National Laboratory of Metrology and Testing found that after a short period of time the
disk had changed, and the data was lost. They found that, even if the CD was stored and
protected from any kind of external damage, there could be a loss of information, because
of small particles that got into it, when it went through the manufacturing process. This left
the disk of the future like a fragile and unstable device for the long run with an approximate
average life span of 15 to 20 years.
It had never been stored so many information in mechanisms that fragile. The average life
span of a flash drive is 10 years. On the other hand, hard drives, which are the memory of
the computers are extremely sensitive. Things like dust and small particles can damage
these devices. This is why the manufactures just offer a guarantee policy for 5 years.
Inventions such as the cloud, the information is stored in a Data Processing Center, where
it doubles infinitesimally from one hard drive to another, in some cases data can be lost.
Because of the fragility of the current data storage devices, scientists from different parts
of the world have researched and created new devices and ways to store information.
In 2013 a group of researchers of the Southampton University presented their first model
of a hard drive made out of quartz, a mineral resistant to heath, acids, and radio waves.
The information of these hard drives is recorded by a femtosecond laser and saved inside
the drive, leaving the information safe from dust and friction. Their latest model named
"The Superman of hard drives" is capable of storing nearly 360 TB and it has an average
life span of 13.800 million years when it is kept in a temperature of 190° C.
Alternatively, there has been an investigation to use the DNA to store data. Nature created
the first and more effective way to store data, it has a life span of 500 years in normal
conditions, and it can last hundreds of thousands of years if its left in a cold and dark
environment. The DNA is made out of four organic bases, and they’re combined in groups
of three (named Codons). These codons give instructions to our cells to produce proteins.
By translating the 0's and 1's digit of binary code into DNA codons, digital data could be
programmed into synthetic DNA.
In 2012, researchers of The European Bioinformatics Institute encoded for the first time
739 KB of computer files into DNA strands. It was encoded the Shakespeare sonnets, a
picture of the institute, genetic text, and the Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
For 2016, researchers of Microsoft and the Washington University encoded 200 MB of
data, including The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a high-def Ok Go Music
video.
DNA as a storage medium doesn't just ensure longevity, but it also can ensure that there
will always be a technology capable to read the DNA, because is information that concerns
our genome.
Currently, we're surfing in an ocean of individual and collective data. Our memory is a
memory of interconnected masses permanently accessible, that despite of the vulnerability
of the modern devices, our memory and the legacy perhaps can still live even more time
than humanity itself.